■Siiiliiii mMim 



•PRAISE 
OF LINCOLN 




Class E ^ 
Book 



Gopyri^M 



^FRx 






COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 



THE 
PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

AN ANTHOLOGY 



COLLECTED AND ARRANGED BY 

A. DALLAS WILLIAMS 



INDIANAPOLIS 
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 



Copyright 1911 
The Bobbs-Merrill Company 



Q 



.vJi?, 



e/ 



t> 



PRESS OF 

BRAUNWORTH & CO. 

BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS 

BROOKLYN, N. Y. 



©CI.A2973 o ■ 



Acknowledgment 



The editor of this Anthology desires to express his sin- 
cere thanks to many publishers and authors for their 
courtesy in granting permission to use selections from 
their various volumes. His thanks are due the following 
publishers : The Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, for 
the use of poems by Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Edmund 
Clarence Stedman, Bayard Taylor, Richard Watson Gil- 
der, James Russell Lowell, Alice Cary, Phcebe Cary, 
Christopher Pearce Cranch, Lucy Larcom, Oliver Wen- 
dell" Holmes, John Greenleaf Whittier, John Townsend 
Trowbridge, Edna Dean Proctor, Julia Ward Howe, Rose 
Terry Cooke, Edward Rowland Sill, Jones Very, Wendell 
Phillips Garrison, Maurice Thompson, John Vance Che- 
ney, Nora Perry, Henry Howard Brownell ; The Mac- 
millan company, New York, the poem by Percy Mac- 
kaye; D. Appleton and Company, New York, for the 
use of poems by William Cullen Bryant ; The Saalfield 
Publishing Company, Akron, Ohio, poem by Phcebe A. 
Hanaford ; Silver Burdett and Company, New York, poem 
by Samuel Francis Smith ; Longmans, Green and Com- 
pany, New York, poems by John James Piatt ; The J. B. 
Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, poem by George 
Henry Boker; G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, poems 
from Abraham Lincoln, by Lyman Whitney Allen, and 
from Survivals, by Lewis V. Randolph ; The Funk and 
Wagnalls Company, New York, poem by Richard Realf ; 
David McKay, Philadelphia, poems by Walt Whitman ; 
Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, poems by Richard 



ACKNOWLEDGMENT 

Henry Stoddard; The New England Publishing Com- 
pany, Boston, poem by Hezekiah Butterworth ; The Loth- 
rop, Lee and Shepard Company, Boston, poem by Robert 
Henry Newell; Thomas Y. Crowell and Company, New 
York, poem by Frank B. Sanborn; Little, Brown and 
Company, Boston, poem by Edith Colby Banfield ; Harper 
and Brothers, New York, poem by Herman Melville, 
from his Battle Pieces and Aspects of the War, and poems 
from The Poetical Works of Charles Graham Halpine. 

Acknowledgments are due the following periodicals 
and magazines for permission to include poems that ap- 
peared originally in their pages: The American Maga- 
zine, The Independent, Youth's Companion, The Atlantic 
Monthly, Success Magazine, Hampton's Magazine and 
The Century. 

Thanks are also due the American Press Association, 
for permission to use An Appreciation of Lincoln, by 
Robertus Love. 

The authors named below have graciously added their 
consent to that of their publishers : John E. Barrett, Vir- 
ginia Frazer Boyle, Edna Dean Proctor, Robertus Love, 
Julia Ward Howe, Phoebe A. Hanaford, Joel Benton, 
Eugene J. Hall, Lyman Whitney Allen, Robert Mackay, 
Horace Spencer Fiske, James Nicoll Johnston, William 
Henry Venable, Percy Mackaye, John Townsend Trow- 
bridge, Florence Evelyn Pratt, Margaret E. Sangster, 
Edwin Markham, James Oppenheim, Frank B. Sanborn, 
John Vance Cheney, Samuel E. Kiser, William Wilber- 
force Newton, the Reverend Doctor P. C. Croll, Wilbur 
D. Nesbit, the Reverend Levi Lewis Hager, Lewis V. F. 



ACKNOWLEDGMENT 

Randolph, Doctor S. Weir Mitchell, Benjamin S. Parker, 
General John James Piatt, Nathan Haskell Dole, and 
Laura Redden Searing; while Mr. and Mrs. P. McK. 
Garrison have given permission to include the poem by 
their father, Wendell Phillips Garrison. 

By special arrangement with Edward William Thom- 
son we include in the volume his poems entitled: We 
Talked of Lincoln, When Lincoln Died, and Father Abra- 
ham Lincoln, from his volume When Lincoln Died and 
other Poems, published by the Houghton Mifflin Com- 
pany, Boston. 

A. D. W. 



INTRODUCTION 

The poetic faculty is the one divine gift which has 
no limitations in time or space. It sings in every note 
of love, from passion to sacrifice. It tunes its lyre to 
the primrose pitch; and its music is heard in the di- 
apason of the spheres. It records with equal fervor 
the glories of war and the beauties of peace, the white 
man's burden and the black man's care, the thrill of 
liberty and the sullen silence of the slave, the peace of 
home and the pleasures of the harem, the pomp of 
power and the pride of place. It weaves Jacob's coat 
of poverty and Solomon's royal robe. It paints with 
equal touch the passion of a Madonna and a Salome. 
It carries to Paradise the warrior's cry, the lover's sigh 
and the penitential tear. With love and patriotism it 
forms the human trinity. It ascends to heaven, and, 
Lucifer-like, drops swiftly to hell again. It has flat- 
tered Nero on his throne and consoled Milton in his 
blindness. It has cajoled, caressed, rebuked, uplifted, 
dismayed mankind. It dispenses the honey of Hymet- 
tus and the poison of asps. It has recorded the agony 
of Mary and the anguish of Cleopatra. It is good and 
evil, bitterness and sweetness, light and darkness, help 
and hindrance. From its mouth have come both bless- 
ings and cursings. Happy the man who is worthy of 
its glorifications. 

America stands for something or for nothing. I am 
one of those who believe it stands for something. It 
is the one land where the mystery of manhood may 
be fully revealed ; where, at the last, not race nor creed 
nor station, but character shall win and purposes shall 



INTRODUCTION 

be the weights put in the balances of judgment. It is 
the land of hope and not despair. If I were asked 
to tell why thus I think, I should say that what has 
been may be. If I were called upon to name one man 
who proved my statement I should answer, Abraham 
Lincoln. And with the name all doubt would vanish 
and the babel of discordant views become dumb. Be- 
fore you would arise his tall, majestic figure, sharply 
silhouetted against a nineteenth century sky, and you 
would see passing before you the years wherein he 
walked from the Nation's poverty to the Nation's Pan- 
theon. He proved our country's right to be, and our 
power to be right. Who walks in his steps in public or 
in private life will always be enrolled in the Army of 
Constitutional Liberty. His is the one life in our his- 
tory we can not too often review nor too sedulously 
emulate. We may forget all others, but while we re- 
member him in the true sense of remembrance we shall 
be safe. Too much can not be said or sung of him. 
He can not too often be recalled to the memory of this 
people. The marble and the bronze are enriched by his 
homely face. The pigment takes on a richer color as it 
traces his counterfeit presentment. And when the poet 
sweeps his strings in music to the greatness and the 
goodness of this typical American, his chords approach 
the divine — for it was given Lincoln to die for a 
people. 

Anthologies are not new. But to gather the roses 
which have bloomed from the life of our greatest 
man and from his memory, and to let the American 
people behold their beauty and enjoy their perfume is a 
distinct feature in American literature. May this vol- 



INTRODUCTION 

lime be read ; and as we read it may we vow that this 
government "of the people, by the people, for the peo- 
ple, shall not perish from the earth." 



ci*.^#i 



April nth, 191 1. 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 
O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN! 

Walt Whitman 

O Captain ! my Captain ! our fearful trip is done, 
The ship has weathered every wrack, the prize we 

sought is won, 
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, 
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and 

daring ; 

But O heart ! heart ! heart ! 

O the bleeding drops of red, 
Where on the deck my Captain lies, 

Fallen cold and dead ! 

O Captain ! my Captain ! rise up and hear the bells ; 
Rise up — for you the flag is flung — for you the bugle 

trills, 
For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths — for you the 

shores a-crowding, 
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces 

turning. 

Here Captain! dear father! 

This arm beneath your head ! 
It is some dream that on the deck 

You've fallen cold and dead. 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still ; 
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor 

will; 
The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed 

and done, 
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object 

won. 

Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells ! 

But I with mournful tread, 
Walk the deck my Captain lies 

Fallen cold and dead. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 

William Cullen Bryant 

Oh, slow to smite and swift to spare, 
Gentle and merciful and just ! 

Who, in the fear of God didst bear 
The sword of power, a nation's trust. 

In sorrow by thy bier we stand, 
Amid the awe that hushes all, 

And speak the anguish of a land 
That shook with horror at thy fall. 

Thy task is done ; the bond are free ; 

We bear thee to an honored grave, 
Whose proudest monument shall be 

The broken fetters of a slave. 

Pure was thy life ; its bloody close 

Hath placed thee with the sons of light, 

Among the noblest host of those 
Who perished in the cause of right. 



HYMN TO ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

William Wilberforce Newton 

i 

Saw you in his boyhood days 

O'er Kentucky's prairies ; 
Bending to the settler's ways 
Yon poor youth whom now we praise,— 

Romance like the fairies ? 
Hero ! Hero ! Sent from God ! 

Leader of his people. 

ii 

Saw you in the days of youth 

By the candle's flaring : 
Lincoln searching for the truth, 
Splitting rails to gain, forsooth, 

Knowledge for the daring? 
Hero ! Hero ! Sent from God ! 

Leader of his people. 

in 

Saw you in his manhood's prime 

Like a star resplendent : 
Him we praise in measured rhyme 
Waiting for the coming time 

With a faith transcendent? 
Hero ! Hero ! Sent from God ! 

Leader of his people. 

IV 

Saw you in the hour of strife 

When fierce war was raging; 
Him who gave the slaves a life 

3 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Full and rich with freedom rife, 

All his powers engaging? 
Hero ! Hero ! Sent from God ! 

Leader of his people. 

v 

Saw you when the war was done 

(Such is Lincoln's story) 
Him whose strength the strife had won 
Sinking like the setting sun 

Crowned with human glory? 
Hero ! Hero ! Sent from God ! 

Leader of his people. 

VI 

Saw you in our country's roll 
Midst her saints and sages : 

Lincoln's name upon the scroll — 

Standing at the topmost goal 
On the nation's pages? 

Hero ! Hero ! Sent from God ! 
Leader of his people. 

VII 

Hero ! Yes ! We know thy fame ; 

It will live for ever! 
Thou to us art still the same ; 
Great the glory of thy name, 

Great thy strong endeavor! 
Hero ! Hero ! Sent from God ! 

Leader of his people. 



FROM 
THE "COMMEMORATION ODE" 

James Russell Lowell 

Life may be given in many ways, 

And loyalty to truth be sealed 

As bravely in the closet as the field, 

So bountiful is Fate; 

But then to stand beside her, 

When craven churls deride her, 

To front a lie in arms and not to yield, 

This shows, methinks, God's plan 

And measure of a stalwart man, 

Limbed like the old heroic breeds, 

Who stands self-poised on manhood's solid earth, 

Not forced to frame excuses for his birth, 

Fed from within, with all the strength he needs. 

Such was he, our martyr chief, 

Whom late the nation he had led 

With ashes on her head, 

Wept with the passion of an angry grief ; 

Forgive me if from present things I turn 

To speak what in my heart will beat and burn, 

And hang my wreath on this world-honored urn. 

Nature, they say, doth dote, 

And can not make a man 

Save on some worn-out plan, 

Repeating us by rote ; 

For him her old world molds aside she threw, 

And, choosing sweet clay from the breast 

Of the unexhausted West, 

With stuff untainted, shaped a hero new, 

Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true. 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

How beautiful to see 

Once more a shepherd of mankind, indeed, 

Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead ; 

One whose meek flock the people joyed to be, 

Not lured by any cheat of birth, 

But by his clean-grained human worth, 

And brave old wisdom of sincerity ! 

They know that outward grace is dust ; 

They could not choose but trust 

In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering, skill, 

And supple-tempered will 

That bent like perfect steel to spring again and thrust. 

His was no lonely mountain peak of mind, 

Thrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars, 

A sea mark now, now lost in vapors blind ; 

Broad prairie rather, genial, level lined, 

Fruitful and friendly for all human kind, 

Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest stars. 

Nothingjoi-EiH^pe-here^ 

Or, then, of Europe fronting mornward still, 

Ere any names of serf or peer 

Could Nature's equal scheme deface 

And thwart her genial will ; 

Here was a type of the true elder race, 

And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face. 

I praise him not ; it were too late ; 

And some innative weakness there must be 

In him who condescends to victory 

Such as the present gives and can not wait, 

Safe in himself as in a fate. 

So always firmly he : 

He knew to bide his time, 

And can his fame abide, 

Still patient in his faith sublime, 

Till the wise years decide. 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Great captains with their guns and drums, 

Disturb our judgment of the hour, 

But at last Silence comes ; 

These all are gone, and, standing like a tower, 

Our children shall behold his fame, 

The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man, 

Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, 

New birth of our new soil, the first American. 



LINCOLN 

James Whitcomb Riley 

A peaceful life; — just toil and rest — 

All his desire ; — 
To read the books he liked the best 

Beside the cabin fire — 
God's word and man's ; — to peer sometimes 

Above the page, in smouldering gleams, 
And catch, like far heroic rhymes, 

The onmarch of his dreams. 

A peaceful life; — to hear the low 

Of pastured herds, 
Or woodman's axe that, blow on blow, 

Fell sweet as rhythmic words. 
And yet there stirred within his breast 

A fateful pulse that, like a roll 
Of drums, made high above his rest 

A tumult in his soul. 

A peaceful life! . . . They haled him even 

As One was haled 
Whose open palms were nailed toward Heaven 

When prayers nor aught availed. 

7 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

And, lo, he paid the selfsame price 
To lull a nation's awful strife 

And will us, through the sacrifice 
Of self, his peaceful life. 



LINCOLN 

Julia Ward Howe 

Through the dim pageant of the years 
A wondrous tracery appears ; 
A cabin of the Western wild 
Shelters to sleep a newborn child. 

Nor nurse, nor parent dear can know 
The way those infant feet must go; 
And yet a nation's help and hope 
Are sealed within that horoscope. 

Beyond is toil for daily bread 
And thought, to noble issues led, 
And courage arming for the morn 
For whose behest this man was born. 

A man of homely, rustic ways, 
Yet he achieves the forum's praise, 
And soon earth's highest meed has won, 
The seat and sway of Washington. 

No throne of honors and delights ; 
Distrustful days and sleepless nights, 
To struggle, suffer, and aspire, 
Like Israel, led by cloud and fire. 



8 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

A treacherous shot, a sob of rest, 
A martyr's palm upon his breast, 
A welcome from the glorious seat 
Where blameless souls of heroes meet. 

And thrilling through unmeasured days, 
A song of gratitude and praise ; 
A cry that all the earth shall heed, 
To God, who gave him for our need. 



AN APPRECIATION OF LINCOLN 

Robcrtus Love 

Somewhar down thar round Hodgenville, Kaintucky, 

Or tharabouts, a hundred year ago, 
Was born a boy ye wouldn' thought was lucky ; 

Looked like he never wouldn' have a show. 

But ... I don' know. 
That boy was started middlin' well, I'm thinkin'. 
His name ? W'y, it was Abraham — Abe Lincoln. 

Pore whites his folks was? Yes, as pore as any. 

Them pioneers, they wa'n't no plutocrats ; 
Belonged right down among the humble many, 

And no more property than dogs or cats. 

But . . . maybe that's 
As good a way as any for a startin'. 
Abe Lincoln, he riz middlin' high, for sartin ! 

Somehow I've always had a sort o' sneakin' 

Idee that peddygrees is purty much 
Like monkeys' tails— so long they're apt to weaken 

The yap that drags 'em round. No use for such ! 

But . . . beats the Dutch 
How now and then a lad like little Aby 
Grows up a president — or guvnor, maybe. 

9 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Abe Lincoln never had no reg'lar schoolin' ; 

He never quarterbacked nor pulled stroke oar, 
Nor never spent his time and money foolin' 

With buried langwidges and ancient lore. 

But . . . Abe l'arned more 
To set him forrerd in the human film' 
Than all the college fellers' kit and bilin'. 

Abe Lincoln never did git hifalutin' — 
Not even thar in Washin'ton, D. C. 

He jist kep' common, humble, ord'n'ry, suitin' 
His backwoods corn patch raisin' to a T. 
But . . . jiminygee! 

W'y, Abe was any statesman's peer and ekul 

And wise as Solomon or old Ezekul. 

I reckon, I'm a bit old-fashioned, maybe, 
But when I want a pattern for a man 

I'm middlin' shore to measure Father Aby 
And cut to fit his homely human plan. 
And long's I can 

I'm hootin' loud and rootin' proud, by hucky, 

For that old boy from Hodgenville, Kaintucky. 



LINCOLN 

Samuel E. Riser 

New heroes rise above the toiling throng, 
And daily come resplendent into view, 
And pass again, remembered by a few, 

To leave one form in bold relief and strong 

That higher looms as ages march along ; 
One name that lingers in the memory, too, 

And singers through all time shall raise the sonj 
And keep it swelling loud and ringing true ! 
10 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Lo, where the feet of Lincoln passed, the earth 
Is sacred, where he knelt we set a shrine ! 

Oh, to have pressed his hand ! That had sufficed 

To make my children wonder at my worth — 
Yet, let them glory, since their land and mine 

Hath reared the greatest martyr after Christ ! 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Virginia Frazer Boyle 

(Written for the Centennial Celebration, February 12th, 1909, by 
Invitation of the Philadelphia Brigade Association— Penna.) 

"The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield 
and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone, all over 
this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again 
touched, as surely they will be, by the angels of our better na- 
ture." — Abraham Lincoln. 

No trumpet blared the word that he was born, 
Nor lightning flashed its symbols on the day ; 

And only Poverty and Fate pressed on, 

To serve as handmaids where he lowly lay. 

No royal trappings fell to his rude part, — 

A simple hut and labor were its goal ; 
But Fate, stern-eyed, had held him to her heart, 

And left a greatness on his rugged soul. 

And up from earth and toil, he slowly won, — 
Pressed by a bitterness he proudly spurned, 

Till by grim courage, born from sun to sun, 
He turned defeat, as victory is turned. 

Sired deep in destiny, he backward threw 
The old heredities that men have known ; 

And round his gaunt and homely form he drew 

The fierce white light that greatness makes its own. 

11 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Sad-eyed and wan, yet strong to do the right, — 
To clear the truth, as God gave him to see, 

He held a raging country by his might, 
Before the iron hour of destiny. 

Nor flame nor sword nor silver tongues availed 
To turn his passion from its steady flow ; 

The compact of the Fathers had not failed, — 
He would not let an angered people go ! — 

He stood in calm, while shaking chaos swept 
The Union, — North and South, in seething flood. 

And on his knees the griefs of both he wept, — 
But kept unbroke, the compact sealed in blood. 

He saw the sullen smoke of battle lift, 

That closed the carnage of the war of wars ; 

And on the height, hailed through the azure rift 
The flag whose folds have never dipped its stars. 

But amnesty was in the conquering hand 

That yearned across the silent cannon's mouth ; — 

When with the knell that startled all the land, 
There died the last hope of the bleeding South ! — 

With gentle tread, time wears upon the past. 

The field of blood is dried, the waste is tilled ; 
And by the light of peace around them cast, 

Men read the earnest prophecy, fulfilled. 

There is no woe in this broad land to-day, 
Held in the bonds of faith, forever one; 

The golden glow of progress leads the way, 

Where once the guns of wrath have darkly shone. 



12 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Here rest their arms, while deathless glory tells 
The watch of time for all the true and brave,- 

And here the grandeur of a Nation dwells, — 
The Union, that a Lincoln died to save ! — 



THE CENOTAPH OF LINCOLN 

James T. McKay 

And so they buried Lincoln? Strange and vain. 

Has any creature thought of Lincoln hid 

In any vault 'neath any coffin lid, 
In all the years since that wild spring of pain? 
'Tis false — he never in the grave hath lain. 

You could not bury him although you slid 

Upon his clay the Cheops Pyramid, 
Or heaped it with the Rocky Mountain chain. 
They slew themselves ; — they but set Lincoln free. 

In all the earth his great heart beats as strong, 
Shall beat while pulses throb to chivalry, 

And burn with hate of tyranny and wrong. 
Whoever will may find him, anywhere 
Save in the tomb. Not there — he is not there. 



LINCOLN, THE MAN OF THE 
PEOPLE 

Edwin Markham 

When the Norn Mother saw the Whirlwind Hour 

Greatening and darkening as it hurried on, 

She left the Heaven of Heroes and came down 

To make a man to meet the mortal need. 

She took the tried clay of the common road — 

Clay warm yet with the ancient heat of Earth, 

13 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Dashed through it all a strain of prophecy ; 
Tempered the heap with thrill of human tears ; 
Then mixed a laughter with the serious stuff. 
Into the shape she breathed a flame to light 
That tender, tragic, ever-changing face. 
Here was a man to hold against the world, 
A man to match the mountains and the sea. 

The color of the ground was in him, the red earth; 

The smack and tang of elemental things : 

The rectitude and patience of the cliff ; 

The good- will of the rain that loves all leaves; 

The friendly welcome of the wayside well ; 

The courage of the bird that dares the sea ; 

The gladness of the wind that shakes the corn; 

The mercy of the snow that hides all scars; 

The secrecy of streams that make their way 

Beneath the mountain to the rifted rock; 

The undelaying justice of the light 

That gives as freely to the shrinking flower 

As to the great oak flaring to the wind — 

To the grave's low hill as to the Matterhorn 

That shoulders out the sky. 

Sprung from the West, 
The strength of virgin forests braced his mind, 
The hush of spacious prairies stilled his soul. 
Up from log cabin to the Capitol, 
One fire was on his spirit, one resolve — 
To send the keen ax to the root of wrong, 
Clearing a free way for the feet of God. 
And evermore he burned to do his deed 
With the fine stroke and gesture of a king : 
He built the rail-pile as he built the State, 
Pouring his splendid strength through every blow, 
The conscience of him testing every stroke, 
To make his deed the measure of a man. 

14 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

So came the Captain with the thinking heart ; 
And when the judgment thunders split the house, 
Wrenching the rafters from their ancient rest, 
He held the ridgepole up, and spiked again 
The rafters of the Home. He held his place — 
Held the long purpose like a growing tree — 
Held on through blame and faltered not at praise, 
And when he fell in whirlwind, he went down 
As when a lordly cedar, green with boughs, 
Goes down with a great shout upon the hills, 
And leaves a lonesome place against the sky. 



IN MEMORIAM: ABRAHAM 
LINCOLN 

Emily J. Bugbee 

There's a burden of grief on the breezes of spring, 
And a song of regret from the bird on its wing ; 
There's a pall on the sunshine and over the flowers, 
And a shadow of graves on these spirits of ours ; 
For a star hath gone out from the night of our sky, 
On whose brightness we gazed as the war cloud rolled 

So tranquil and steady and clear were its beams, 
That they fell like a vision of peace on our dreams. 

, A heart that we knew had been true to our weal, 
And a hand that was steadily guiding the wheel ; 
A name never tarnished by falsehood or wrong, 
That had dwelt in our hearts like a soul-stirring song; 
Ah, that pure, noble spirit has gone to its rest 
And the true hand lies nerveless and cold on his breast ; 
But the name and the memory, these never will die, 
But grow brighter and dearer as ages go by. 

15 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Yet the tears of a nation fall over the dead, 

Such tears as a nation before never shed, 

For our cherished one fell by a dastardly hand, 

A martyr to truth and the cause of the land ; 

And a sorrow has surged like the waves to the shore 

When the breath of the tempest is sweeping them o'er; 

And the heads of the lofty and lowly have bowed 

As the shaft of the lightning sped out from the cloud. 

Not gathered, like Washington, home to his rest, 
When the sun of his life was far down in the West ; 
But stricken from earth in the midst of his years, 
With the Canaan in view of his prayers and his tears; 
And the people, whose hearts in the wilderness failed, 
Sometimes, when the stars of their promise had paled, 
Now stand by his side on the mount of his fame, 
And yield him their hearts in a grateful acclaim. 

Yet there on the mountain our leader must die, 

With the fair land of promise spread out to his eye ; 

His work is accomplished, and what he has done 

Will stand as a monument under the sun ; 

And his name, reaching down through the ages of time, 

Will still through the years of eternity shine, 

Like a star sailing on through the depths of the blue, 

On whose brightness we gaze every evening anew. 

His white tent is pitched on the beautiful plain, 
Where the tumult of battle comes never again, 
Where the smoke of the war cloud ne'er darkens the 

air, 
Nor falls on the spirit a shadow of care. 
The songs of the ransomed enrapture his ear, 
And he heeds not the dirges that roll for him here; 
In the calm of his spirit, so strange and sublime, 
He is lifted far over the discords of time. 

16 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Then bear him home gently, great son of the West ! 
'Mid her fair blooming prairies lay Lincoln to rest; 
From the nation who loves him she takes to her trust, 
And will tenderly garner the consecrate dust. 
A Mecca his grave to the people shall be, 
A shrine evermore to the hearts of the free. 



AT LINCOLN'S GRAVE 

Maurice Thompson 

May one who fought in honor for the South 
Uncovered stand and sing by Lincoln's grave? 
Why, if I shrank not at the cannon's mouth, 
Nor swerved one inch for any battle-wave, 
Should I now tremble in this quiet close, 
Hearing the prairie wind go lightly by 
From billowy plains of grass and miles of corn, 

While out of deep repose, 
The great sweet spirit lifts itself on high 
And broods above our land this summer morn? 

I, mindful of a dark and bitter past, 

And of its clashing hopes and raging hates, 

Still, standing here, invoke a love so vast 

It cancels all and all obliterates, 

Save love itself, which can not harbor wrong; 

Oh, for a voice of boundless melody, 

A voice to fill heaven's hollow to the brim 

With one brave burst of song, 
Stronger than tempest, nobler than the sea, 
That I might lend it to a song of him ! 



17 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Meseems I feel his presence. Is he dead ? 

Death is a word. He lives and grander grows. 

At Gettysburg he bows his bleeding head ; 

He spreads his arms where Chickamauga flows, 

As if to clasp old soldiers to his breast, 

Of South or North, no matter which they be, 

Not thinking of what uniform they wore, — 

His heart the palimpsest 
Record on record of humanity, 
Where love is first and last for evermore. 

His humor, born of virile opulence, 
Stung like a pungent sap or wild-fruit zest, 
And satisfied a universal sense 
Of manliness, the strongest and the best; 
A soft Kentucky strain was in his voice, 
And the Ohio's deeper boom was there, 
With some wild accents of old Wabash days, 

And winds of Illinois; 
And when he spoke he took us unaware, 
With his high courage and unselfish ways. 

He was the North, the South, the East, the West, 

The thrall, the master, all of us in one ; 

There was no section that he held the best ; 

His love shone as impartial as the sun ; 

And so revenge appealed to him in vain, 

He smiled at it as at a thing forlorn, 

And gently put it from him, rose and stood 

A moment's space in pain, 
Remembering the prairies and the corn 
And the glad voices of the field and wood. 

Annealed in white-hot fire, he bore the test 
Of every strain temptation could invent, — 
Hard points of slander, shivered on his breast, 
Fell at his feet, and envy's blades were bent 
18 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

In his bare hands and lightly cast aside ; 
He would not wear a shield ; no selfish aim 
Guided one thought of all those trying hours ; 

No breath of pride, 
No pompous striving for the pose of fame 
Weakened one stroke of all his noble powers. 



PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S GRAVE 

Caroline A. Mason 

Lay his dear ashes where ye will, — 
On southern slope or western hill ; 
And build above his sacred name 
Your proudest monument of fame ; 
Yet still his grave our hearts shall be ; 
His monument a people free ! 

Sing sweet, sing low ; 

We loved him so ! 
His grave a nation's heart shall be, 
His monument a people free! 

Wave, prairie winds ! above his sleep 
Your mournful dirges, long and deep; 
Proud marble ! o'er his virtues raise 
The tribute of your glittering praise ; 
Yet still his grave our hearts shall be; 
His monument a people free ! 

Sing sweet, sing low ; 

We loved him so ! 
His grave a nation's heart shall be ; 
His monument a people free ! 

So just, so merciful, so wise, 
Ye well may shrine him where he lies ; 
So simply good, so great the while 
Ye well may raise the marble pile ; 

19 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Yet still his grave our hearts shall be ; 
His monument a people free ! 

Sing sweet, sing low ; 

We loved him so ! 
His grave a nation's heart shall be ; 
His monument a people free ! 



LINCOLN 

Authorship Unknown 

Lincoln ! When men would name a man, 
Just, unperturbed, magnanimous, 

Tried in the lowest seat of all, 

Tried in the chief seat of the house — 

Lincoln ! When men would name a man 
Who wrought the great work of his age, 

Who fought and fought the noblest fight, 
And marshaled it from stage to stage, 

Victorious, out of dusk and dark, 
And into dawn and on till day, 

Most humble when the paeans rang, 
Least rigid when the enemy lay 

Prostrated for his feet to tread — 

This name of Lincoln will they name, 

A name revered, a name of scorn, 
Of scorn to sundry, not to fame. 

Lincoln, the man who freed the slave ; 

Lincoln whom never self enticed ; 
Slain Lincoln, worthy found to die 

A soldier of his Captain Christ. 
20 






AT LINCOLN'S TOMB 

Robertus Love 

(Being the Reminiscences of the Honorable Jason Pettigrew, of 
Calhoun County, Illinois, in 1895) 

Abe Lincoln? Wull, I reckon! Not a mile f'om 

where we be, 
Right here in Springfiel', Illinoise, Abe used to room 

with me. 
He represented Sangamon, I tried it for Calhoun, ^ 
And me and Abe was cronies then; I'll not forgit it 

soon. 

I'll not forgit them happy days we used to sort o' batch 
Together in a little room that didn't have no latch 
To keep the other fellers out that liked to come and 

stay 
And hear them dasted funny things Abe Lincoln used 

to say. 

Them days Abe Lincoln and myself was pore as any- 
thing; 

Job's turkey wasn't porer, but we used to laff and sing, 

And Abe was clean chuck full o' fun, but he was sharp 
as tacks, 

For that there comic face o' his'n was fortyfied with 
fac's. 

Some fellers used to laff at Abe because his boots and 

pants 
Appeared to be on distant terms, but when he'd git a 

chance 
He'd give 'em sich a drubbin' that they'd clean forgit 

his looks, 
For Abe made up in common sense the things he lacked 

in books. 

21 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Willi, nex' election I got beat, and Abe come back 

alone ; 
I kep' a-clinkin' on the farm, pervidin' for my own. 
You see, I had a woman and two twins that called me 

paw, 
And Abe he kep' a-clinkin', too, at politics and law. 

I didn't hear much more of Abe out there in old Cal- 
houn, 

For I was out o' politics and kinder out o' chune 

With things that happened, but 'way back I'd named 
my two twin boys — 

One Abraham, one Lincoln — finest team in Illinoise. 

Wull, here one day I read that Abe's among the can- 
didates 

(My old friend Abe!) for president o' these United 
States. 

And, though I had the rheumatiz and felt run-down 
and blue, 

I entered politics ag'in and helped to pull him through. 

And when nex' spring he called for men to fetch their 
grit and guns 

And keep the ship o' state afloat I sent him both my 
sons, 

And would 'a' gone myself and loved to make the bul- 
lets whiz 

'F it hadn't b'en I couldn't walk account o' rheumatiz. 

Wull, Abe — my little Abe, I mean — he started out 

with Grant; 
They buried him at Shiloh. . . . Excuse me, but I 

can't 
Help feelin' father-like, you know, for them was likely 

boys; 
The' wasn't two another sich that went f'om Illinoise. 

22 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

And Lincoln — my son Lincoln — he went on by his- 

self, 
A-grievin' for his brother Abe they'd laid upon the 

shelf, 
And when he come to Vicksburg he was all thrashed 

out and sick, 
And yit when there was fightin' Link fit right in the 

thick. 

One night afore them Johnnies' guns my pore boy 

went to sleep 
On picket dooty. . . . No, sir; 'tain't the shame 

that makes me weep. 
It's how Abe Lincoln, president, at Washin'ton, D. C, 
Had time to ricolleck the days he used to room with 

me! 

For don't you know I wrote to him they'd sentenced to 

be shot 
His namesake, Lincoln Pettigrew, in shame to die and 

rot, 
The son o' his old crony and the last o' my twin boys 
He used to plague me so about at Springfiel', Illinoise. 

Did he ? Did Abe ? Wull, now, he sent a telegraph so 

quick 
It burnt them bottles on the poles and made the light- 

nin' sick ! 
"I pardon Lincoln Pettigrew. A. Lincoln, President." 
The boy has got that paper yit, the telegraph Abe sent. 

I guess I knowed Abe Lincoln, and now I've come 
down here — 

Firs' time I be'n in Springfiel' for nigh on sixty year — 

To see his grave and tombstone, because ... be- 
cause, you see, 

We legislated in cahoots, Abe Lincoln did, and me. 

23 



ON THE LIFE-MASK OF ABRAHAM 
LINCOLN 

Richard Watson Gilder 

This bronze doth keep the very form and mold 
Of our great martyr's face. Yes, this is he : 
That brow all wisdom, all benignity ; 
That human, humorous mouth; those cheeks that 
hold 

Like some harsh landscape all the summer's gold ; 
That spirit fit for sorrow, as the sea 
For storms to beat on ; the lone agony 
Those silent, patient lips too well foretold. 

Yes, this is he who ruled a world of men 
As might some prophet of the elder day — 
Brooding above the tempest and the fray 

With deep-eyed thought and more than mortal ken. 
A power was his beyond the touch of art 
Or armed strength — his pure and mighty heart. 

THE GRAVE OF LINCOLN 

Edna Dean Proctor 

Now must the storied Potomac 

Laurels for ever divide, 
Now to the Sangamon fameless 

Give of its century's pride. 
Sangamon, stream of the prairies, 

Placidly westward that flows, 
Far in whose city of silence 

Calm he has sought his repose. 
Over our Washington's river 

Sunrise beams rosy and fair, 
Sunset on Sangamon fairer — 

Father and martyr lies there. 
24 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Kings under pyramids slumber, 

Sealed in the Lybian sands ; 
Princes in gorgeous cathedrals 

Decked with the spoil of the lands. 
Kinglier, princelier sleeps he 

Couched 'mid the prairies serene, 
Only the turf and the willow 

Him and God's heaven between ! 
Temple nor column to cumber 

Verdure and bloom of the sod — 
So, in the vale by Beth-peor, 

Moses was buried of God. 

Break into blossom, O prairies ! 

Snowy and golden and red ; 
Peers of the Palestine lilies 

Heap for your glorious dead ! 
Roses as fair as of Sharon, 

Branches as stately as palm, 
Odors as rich as the spices — 

Cassia and aloes and balm — 
Mary the loved and Salome, 

All with a gracious accord, 
Ere the first glow of the morning 

Brought to the tomb of the Lord. 

Wind of the West ! breathe around him 

Soft as the saddened air's sigh 
When to the summit of Pisgah 

Moses had journeyed to die. 
Clear as its anthem that floated 

Wide o'er the Moabite plain, 
Low with the wail of the people 

Blending its burdened refrain. 



25 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Rarer, O Wind ! and diviner, — 
Sweet as the breeze that went by, 

When, over Olivet's mountain, 
Jesus was lost in the sky. 

Not for thy sheaves and savannas 

Crown we thee, proud Illinois ! 
Here in his grave is thy grandeur; 

Born of his sorrow thy joy. 
Only the tomb by Mount Zion 

Hewn for the Lord do we hold 
Dearer than his in thy prairies, 

Girdled with harvests of gold. 
Still for the world, through the ages 

Wreathing with glory his brow, 
He shall be Liberty's Savior — 

Freedom's Jerusalem thou ! 



THE HAND OF LINCOLN 

Edmund Clarence Stcdman 

Look on this cast, and know the hand 

That bore a nation in its hold ; 
From this mute witness understand 

What Lincoln was — how large of mold. 

The man who sped the woodman's team, 
And deepest sunk the plowman's share, 

And pushed the laden raft astream, 
Of fate before him unaware. 

This was the hand that knew to swing 
The axe — since thus would Freedom train 

Her son — and made the forest ring, 
And drove the wedge, and toiled amain. 
26 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Firm hand, that loftier office took, 
A conscious leader's will obeyed, 

And, when men sought his word and look, 
With steadfast might the gathering swayed. 

No courtier's, toying with a sword, 
Nor minstrel's, laid across a lute ; 

A chief's, uplifted to the Lord 

When all the kings of earth were mute ! 

The hand of Anak, sinewed strong, 
The fingers that on greatness clutch ; 

Yet, lo ! the marks their lines along 
Of one who strove and suffered much. 

For here in knotted cord and vein, 
I trace the varying chart of years ; 

I know the troubled heart, the strain, 
The weight of Atlas — and the tears. 

Again I see the patient brow 

That palm erewhile was wont to press ; 
And now 'tis furrowed deep, and now 

Made smooth with hope and tenderness. 

For something of a formless grace 
This molded outline plays about ; 

A pitying flame, beyond our trace, 
Breathes like a spirit, in and out. 

The love that casts an aureole 

Round one who, longer to endure, 

Called mirth to ease his ceaseless dole, 
Yet kept his nobler purpose sure. 



21 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Lo, as I gaze, the staturecl man, 

Built up from yon large hand, appears; 
A type that nature wills to plan 

But once in all a people's years. 

What better than this voiceless cast 

To tell of such a one as he, 
Since through its living semblance passed 

The thought that bade a race be free. 



THE LIFE-MASK OF ABRAHAM 
LINCOLN 

Stuart Sterne 
(At the National Museum in Washington) 

Ah, countless wonders brought from every zone, 
Not all your wealth could turn the heart away 
From that one semblance of our common clay, 
The brow whereon the precious life long flown 

Leaving a homely glory all its own, 

Seems still to linger, with a mournful play 
Of light and shadow ! — His, who held a sway 
And power of magic to himself unknown, 

Through what is granted but God's chosen few, 
Earth's crownless, yet anointed kings, — a soul 
Divinely simple and sublimely true 

In that unconscious greatness that shall bless 
This petty world while stars their courses roll, 
Whose finest flower is sclf-forgetf illness. 



28 



THE LIBERATOR 

Horace Spencer Fiske 
(Saint Gaudens' Lincoln, Lincoln Park, Chicago) 

Uprisen from his fasced chair of state, 
Above his riven people bending grave, 
His heart upon the sorrow of the slave, 

Stands simply strong the kindly man of fate, 

By war's deep bitterness and brothers' hate 
Untouched he stands, intent alone to save 
What God Himself and human justice gave; 

The right of men to freedom's fair estate. 

In human strength he towers almost divine, 
His mighty shoulders bent with breaking care. 

His thought-worn face with sympathies grown fine ; 
And as men gaze, their hearts as oft declare 

That this is he whom all their hearts enshrine — 

This man that saved a race from slow despair. 



LINCOLN IN BRONZE 

Robertus Love 
(In Lincoln Park, Chicago) 

Here do I look upon historic form 

Fashioned in bronze grown cold, but glowing yet- 
In our Columbia's memory-casket set 

A sovereign jewel. Earth's unconscious storm 

May beat upon and work the statue harm ; 
Old Time may topple it without regret. 
Perish the bronze ! But we will not forget 

The great heart for its brothers beating warm. 

29 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

The hand of Lincoln, bronzed by honest toil 
That drove the ax to fell the forest oak, 

Then working up amid the world's turmoil, 
At one proud blow four million fetters broke 

It is not dust — still does it reach and clasp 

Past, Present, Future, in its kindly grasp. 



THE EMANCIPATION GROUP 

John Greenleaf Whittier 
(Park Square, Boston) 

Amidst thy sacred effigies 

Of old renown give place, 
O city, Freedom-loved ! to his 

Whose hand unchained a race. 

Take the worn frame, that rested not 

Save in a martyr's grave ; 
The care-lined face, that none forgot, 

Bent to the kneeling slave. 

Let man be free ! The mighty word 
He spoke was not his own ; 

An impulse from the Highest stirred 
These chiseled lips alone. 

The cloudy sign, the fiery guide, 

Along his pathway ran, 
And Nature, through his voice, denied 

The ownership of man. 

We rest in peace where these sad eyes 

Saw peril, strife and pain ; 
His was the nation's sacrifice, 

And ours the priceless gain. 

30 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

"O symbol of God's will on earth 

As it is done above ! 
Bear witness to the cost and worth 
Of justice and of love. 

Stand in thy place and testify 

To coming ages long, 
That truth is stronger than a lie, 

And righteousness than wrong. 



ENGLAND'S SORROW 

Authorship Unknoivn — From London Fun 

The hand of an assassin, glowing red, 

Shot like a firebrand through the western sky ; 
And stalwart Abraham Lincoln now is dead ! 

Oh, felon heart that thus could basely dye 
The name of Southerner with murderous gore! 

Could such a spirit come from mortal womb? 
And what possessed it that not heretofore 

It linked its coward mission with the tomb ? 
Lincoln ! thy fame shall sound through many an age, 

To prove that genius lives in humble birth ;• 
Thy name shall sound upon historic page, 

For 'midst thy faults we all esteemed thy worth. 
Gone art thou now ! no more 'midst angry heat 

Shall thy calm spirit rule the surging tide, 
Which rolls where two contending nations meet, 

To still the passion and to curb the pride. 
Nations have looked and seen the fate of kings, 

Protestors, Emperors, and such like men ; 
Behold the man whose dirge all Europe sings, 

Now past the eulogy of mortal pen ! 
He, like a lighthouse fell athwart the strand ; 
Let curses rest upon the assassin's hand ! 

3 1 



WE TALKED OF LINCOLN 

Edzvard William Thomson 

We talked of Abraham Lincoln in the night, 
Ten fur-coat men on North Saskatchewan's plain — 
Pure zero cold and all the prairie white — 
Englishman, Scotchman, Scandinavian, Dane, 
Two Irish, four Canadians — all for gain 
Of food and raiment, children, parents, wives, 
Living the hardest life that man survives, 
And secret proud because it was so hard 
Exploring, camping, axing, faring lean. — 
Month in and out no creature had we seen 
Except our burdened dogs, gaunt foxes gray, 
Hard-feathered grouse that shot would seldom slay, 
Slinking coyotes, plumy-trailing owls, 
Stark Indians warm in rabbit-blanket cowls, 
And, still as shadows in their deep-tracked yard, 
The dun vague moose we startled from our way. 

We talked of Abraham Lincoln in the night 

Around our fire of tamarac crackling fierce. 

Yet dim, like moon and stars, in that vast light 

Boreal, bannery, shifting quick to pierce 

Ethereal blanks of Space with falchion streams 

Transfigured wondrous into quivering beams 

From Forms enormous — marching through the sky 

To dissolution and new majesty. 

And speech was low around our bivouac fire, 

Since in our inmost heart of hearts there grew 

The sense of mortal feebleness, to see 

Those silent miracles of Might on high 

Seemingly done for only such as we 

In sign how nearer Death and Doom we drew, 

While in the ancient tribal-soul we knew 

32 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Onr old hard faring father-Vikings' dreams 
Of Odin at Valhalla's open door, 
Where they might see the Battle- father's face 
Glowing at last, when Life and Toil were o'er, 
Were they but staunch-enduring in their place. 

We talked of Abraham Lincoln in the night. — 

Oh, sweet and strange to hear the hard-hand men 

Old-Abeing him, like half the world of yore 

In years when Grant's and Lee's young soldiers bore 

Rifle and steel, and proud that heroes live 

When folks their lives to Labor mostly give. 

And strange and sweet to hear their voices call 

Him "Father Abraham," though no man of all 

Was born within the Nation of his birth, 

It was as if they felt that all the Earth 

Possess of right Earth's greatest common man, 

Her sanest, wisest, simplest, steadiest son, 

To whom The Father's children all were one, 

And Pomp and Vanities as motes that danced 

In the clear sunshine where his humor glanced. 

We talked of Abraham Lincoln in the night 

Until one spoke, "We yet may see his face." 

Whereon the fire crackled loud through space 

Of human silence, while eyes reverent 

Toward the auroral miracle were bent 

Till from the trancing Glory spirits came 

Within our semicircle round the flame, 

And drew us closer-ringed, until we could 

Feel the kind touch of vital brotherhood 

Which Father Abraham Lincoln thought so good. 



33 



WASHINGTON AND LINCOLN 

Authorship Unknown 

One forged the links that welded fact 
The nation's fame that it might last 

Forever and a day ; 
The other with his might and main 
Did rivet it when rent in twain — 

His name will live for aye ! 

Hail, Washington ! and Lincoln, hail ! 
Your glory shall not fade nor fail, 

The Stars and Stripes shall wave 
Resplendent o'er our crags and shores, 
Majestic as the eagle soars — 

Triumphant o'er the grave ! 



PUNCH'S APOLOGY 

Tom Taylor 
(Abraham Lincoln, Foully Assassinated April, 1865) 

You lay a wreath on murdered Lincoln's bier, 
You, who, with mocking pencil wont to trace 

Broad, for the self-complacent sneer, 

His length of shambling limb, his furrowed face. 

His gaunt, gnarled hands, his unkempt, bristling hair, 
His garb uncouth, his bearing ill at ease, 

His lack of all we prize as debonair, 

Of power or will to shine, of art to please. 

34 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

You, whose smart pen backed up the pencil's laugh, 
Judging each step as though the way were plain ; 

Reckless, so it could point its paragraph 
Of chief's perplexity, or people's pain. 

Beside this corpse, that bears for winding sheet 
The Stars and Stripes he lived to rear anew, 

Between the mourners at his head and feet, 
Say, scurril jester, is there room for you? 

Yes, he had lived to shame me from my sneer, / 
To lame my pencil and confute my pen — 

To make me own this hind of princes peer, 
This rail splitter, as true-born king of men. 

My shallow judgment I had learned to rue, 
Noting how to occasion's height he rose, 

How his quaint wit made home truth seem more true, 
How iron-like, his temper grew by blows. 

How humble, yet how hopeful he could be; 

How in good fortune and in ill the same ; 
Nor bitter in success, nor boastful he, 

Thirsty for gold nor feverish for fame. 

He went about his work — such work as few 
Ever had laid on head, and heart, and hand — 

As one who knows, where there's a task to do, 

Man's honest will must Heaven's good grace com- 
mand. 

Who trusts the strength will with the burden grow, 
That God makes instruments to work His will, 

If but that will we can arrive to know, 

Nor tamper with the weights of good and ill. 

35 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

So he went forth to battle, on the side 

That he felt clear was Liberty's and Right's, 

As in his peasant boyhood he had plied 
His warfare with rude Nature's thwarting mights — 

The uncleared forest, the unbroken soil, 

The iron bark that turns the lumberer's axe, 

The rapid, that o'erbears the boatman's toil, 

The prairie, hiding the mazed wanderer's tracks, 

The ambushed Indian, and the prowling bear — 

Such were the needs that helped his youth to train ; 

Rough culture — but such trees large fruit may bear, 
If but their stocks be of right girth and grain. 

So he grew up a destined work to do, 

And lived to do it ; four long, suffering years' 

111 fate, ill feeling, ill report, lived through, 
And then he heard the hisses change to cheers, 

The taunts to tribute, the abuse to praise, 

And took both with the same unwavering mood ; 

Till, as he came on light, from darkling days, 

And seemed to touch the goal from where he stood. 

A felon hand, between the goal and him, 

Reached from behind his back, a trigger pressed — - 

And those perplexed and patient eyes were dim, 
Those gaunt, long laboring limbs were laid to rest ! 

The words of mercy were upon his lips, 
Forgiveness in his heart and on his pen, 

When this vile murderer brought swift eclipse 
To thoughts of peace on earth, good will to men. 



36 






THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

The old world and the new, from sea to sea, 
Utter one voice of sympathy and shame ! 

Sore heart, so stopped when it at last beat high, 
Sad life, cut short just as its triumph came. 

A deed accursed ! Strokes have been struck before 
By the assassin's hand, whereof men doubt 

If more of horror or disgrace they bore ; 
But thy foul crime, like Cain's, stands darkly out. 

Vile hand, that brandest murder on a strife, 

Whate'er its grounds, stoutly and nobly striven; 

And with the martyr's crown crownest a life 
With much to praise, little to be forgiven. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Mary Livingston Burdick 

Safe in Fame's gallery through all the years, 
Our dearest picture hangs, your steadfast face, 
Whose eyes hold all the pathos of the race 

Redeemed by you from Servitude's sad tears. 

And how redeemed? With agony of grief; 

With ceaseless labor in war's lurid light ; 

With such deep anguish in each lonely night, 
Your soul sweat very blood ere came relief. 

What crown have you who bore that cross below ? 

O faithful one, what is your life above? 

Is there a higher gift in God's pure love 
Than to have lived on earth as Man of Woe? 



37 



THE COMING OF LINCOLN 

Edwin Markham 

Men saw no portents on that winter night 
A hundred years ago. No omens flared 
Above that rail-built cabin with one door, 
And windowless to all the peering stars. 
They laid him in the hollow of a log, 
Humblest of cradles, save that other one — 
The manger in the stall at Bethlehem. 

No portents ! yet with whisper and alarm 
The Evil Powers that dread the nearing feet 
Of heroes held a council in that hour ; 
And sent three fates to darken that low door, 
To baffle and beat back the heaven-sent child. 
Three were the fates — gaunt Poverty that chains, 
Gray Drudgery that grinds the hope away, 
And gaping Ignorance that starves the soul. 

They came with secret laughters to destroy. 
Ever they dogged him, counting every step, 
Waylaid his youth and struggled for his life. 
They came to master, but he made them serve. 
And from the wrestle with the destinies, 
He rose with all his energies aglow. 

For God, upon whose steadfast shoulders rest 
These governments of ours, had not forgot. 
He needed for His purposes a voice, 
A voice to be a clarion on the wind, 
Crying the word of freedom to dead hearts, 
The word the centuries had waited for. 

38 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

So hidden in the West, God shaped His man. 
There in the unspoiled solitudes he grew, 
Unwarped by culture and uncramped by creed ; 
Keeping his course courageous and alone, 
As goes the Mississippi to the sea. 
His daring spirit burst the narrow bounds, 
Rose resolute ; and like the sea-called stream, 
He tore new channels where he found no way. 

The tools were his first teachers, sternly kind. 
The plow, the scythe, the maul, the echoing axe 
Taught him their homely wisdom and their peace. 
He had the plain man's genius — common sense, 
Yet rage for knowledge drove his mind afar ; 
He fed his spirit with the bread of books, 
And slaked his thirst at all the wells of thought. 

But most he read the heart of common man, 
Scanned all its secret pages stained with tears, 
Saw all the guile, saw all the piteous pain ; 
And yet could keep the smile about his lips, 
Love and forgive, see all and pardon all ; 
His only fault, the fault that some of old 
Laid even on God — that he was ever wont 
To bend the law to let his mercy out. 



LINCOLN 

From the American Magazine 

In him distilled and potent the choice essence of a race! 
Far back the Puritans — stern and manful visionaries, 
Repressed poets, flushed with dreams of glowing theol- 
ogies ! 
Each new succession, out of border hardship, 

39 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Refined to human use the initial rigor of the breed, 
Passing to the next the unconscious possession of a 

perfecting soul ! 
Each forest clearing gave something of neighborly 

grace, 
The rude play of cabin-bred natural people something 

of humor, 
Each mountain home something of inner daring, 
Each long-wandering life something of patience and 

hope! 
In the open, far-seen nature gradually chiseled 
The deepening wistful eyes. 
Each axman and each plowman added 
Another filament of ruggedness ; 
Unknowing minds dumbly cried for liberty ; 
Mute hearts strove against injustice. 
At last was ready the alembic, where Nature stored 

and set apart 
Each generation's finest residue, 
Waiting for the hour of perfect mixture — 
And then the Miracle ! 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Fred Clare Baldwin 

With Humor's wand in hands to hardship used 
He changed the face of poverty's estate; 
At Wisdom's fount he drank insatiate; 

O'er Destiny's dark sayings deeply mused : 

Of large ambition let him be accused; 

Though ne'er will our full tide of joy abate 
That in the mold which cast a soul so great 

Were heart and conscience with ambition fused : 

As high in honor as in stature tall, 

In vision broader than the plains he trod, 
40 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

As firm in courage as the buttressed wall, 

This child of genius was the friend of God; 
And unto him the martyr's task was given, 
To reunite a realm by hatred riven. 



THE PROCLAMATION 

Charles Godfrey Leland 

Now who has done the greatest deed 

Which History has ever known? 
And who in Freedom's direst need 

Became her bravest champion ? 
Who a whole continent set free ? 

Who killed the curse and broke the ban 
Which made a lie of liberty ? 

You, Father Abraham — you're the man ! 

The deed is done. Millions have yearned 

To see the spear of Freedom cast. 
The dragon roared and writhed and burned 

You've smote him full and square at last. 
O Great and True ! You do not know — 

You can not tell — you can not feel 
How far through time your name must go, 
Honored by all men, high or low, 

Where Freedom's votaries kneel. 

This wide world takes in many a tongue — 

This world boasts many a noble state ; 
In all your praises will be sung — 

In all the great will call you great. 
Freedom ! where'er that word is known — 

On silent shore, by sounding sea, 
'Mid millions, or in deserts lone — 

Your noble name shall ever be, 

4i 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

The word is out, the deed is done, 

The spear is cast, dread no delay; 
When such a steed is fairly gone, 

Fate never fails to find a way. 
Hurrah ! hurrah ! the track is clear, 

We know your policy and plan ; 
We'll stand by you through every year ; 

Now, Father Abraham, you're our man. 



TO THE SPIRIT OF ABRAHAM 
LINCOLN 

Richard Watson Gilder 
(Reunion at Gettysburg, I 



Shade of our greatest, O look down to-day! 
Here the long, dread midsummer battle roared, 
And brother in brother plunged the accursed 

sword ; — 
Here foe meets foe once more in proud array 

Yet not as once to harry and to slay 

But to strike hands, and with sublime accord 
Weep tears heroic for the souls that soared 
Quick from earth's carnage to the starry way. 

Each fought for what he deemed the people's good, 
And proved his bravery with his offered life, 
And sealed his honor with his outpoured blood ; 

But the Eternal did direct the strife, 

And on this sacred field one patriot host 
Now calls thee father, — dear, majestic ghost ! 



42 



THE FAME OF LINCOLN 

A. Dallas Williams 

Wherever men are civilized they know 

The name of him who gave his life to save 
Our seething nation from impending woe, 

And found an honored but untimely grave. 
Where'er the English tongue is spoken, there 

The name of Lincoln finds unstinted praise — 
This shoulder-stooped, this toil-worn son of care, 

Who bore our burdens through unhappy days. 

The name of Lincoln, all around the world, 

Is on the lips of statesman, slave, and king ; 
Where'er the flag of Freedom is unfurled, 

They know of Lincoln's toil and suffering, 
They know of Lincoln's care and sacrifice, 

In all the nations underneath the skies ; 
Beneath the tropic sun, or 'midst the ice 

Of Arctic fields, deserved fame ne'er dies. 

Who can forget the patience, hope, and love 

That filled his heart through all the surging years 
Of civil strife? the toil and grief thereof, 

The faith that led him on through falling tears ? 
Cheer for the friend, forgiveness for the foe, 

With aught of malice in his heart for none ; 
And when at last the writhing years of woe 

Were o'er, rejoicing that the strife was done. 

Who can forget the cruel jeers and sneers 

Of those who should have helped, but criticized? 

His heart was filled with pity, not with fears, 

Nor by their taunts and threats was he surprised ; 

43 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

With courage, calm, unfaltering as dawn, 

He stood, while friends and counsellors reviled ; 

He did the nearest duty, trusting on, 

And when rage changed to love, he simply smiled. 

A loyal people have enshrined the great 

And patriotic statesman in their hearts ; 
Their love for him does not, can not abate ; 

In homes and offices, in fields and marts, 
His name is reverenced ; both high and low, 

Men, women, children, join in the applause; 
Yea, countless thousands worthy praise bestow 

On him who bravely toiled in Freedom's cause. 

His fame endures — not like the fame of some, 

Whose names on every tongue applause invite, 
And then the people suddenly are dumb; 

Like Jonah's gourd, which perished in a night, 
Their fame is dead, and they are left in woe — 

The years but add fresh laurels to his name, 
And like the mighty oaks which stately grow, 

So grows this patient man's undying fame. 



LINCOLN 

Richard Wightman 

(1861-1865) 

And he was once a babe, little and like any other, 
Wan, slow-eyed, knowing not his mother, knowing- 
only her breasts, 
Sleeping in the day, showing no hint of stature or of 



power 



What recked he that the walls about were less than 
palace walls, 

44 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Or that the snow, sifting upon him through the log- 
crevices, 

Was not the dust of warm and gentle stars? 

Rude-handed they who tended him — rough miners 
with a Kohinoor — 

And yet were they the tools of God to help that babe 
to be! 

Then sun succeeded sun, and to the wid'ning eyes of 

Youth 
Far heights on heights stood clear, 
Topped by a nameless glory to be won 
By life and love and tireless trust in Right, 
And patient toil and fearless grapple with the Wrong. 
'Twas but the vision of a dreamful boy, 
But in it surely lay the unity of States, 
The lengthened gleam of all the Flag's fair stars, 
And justice done to men — some white, some black, 
The owners and the owned, 
But bondaged all until the great Decree ! 

And oh, the soul of him 

So stalwartly embarred within its clay, 

Yet roaming far, halting not upon the shores of his 

America, 
Crossing seas and deserts to set up its claim 
Of universal kinship! 
We say we are his people — proudly we say it and with 

reverence — 
But in his heart he kept all men and fathered them with 

tenderness. 
Almost it seemed as if from out his loins — 
This great parental man — the race had sprung ! 
He knew no couch of down, no viands rare, no easy 

leveled way. 

45 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Lonely he fought his fight, and gained the meed of 
Wisdom, 

Insignia of Poise, and Love's gemmed chaplet, fade- 
less through the years. 

We say that he was born, and date his death, 

But while the light seeks out the vales, and darkness 
holds them close 

This man shall be ! 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Eugene J. Hall 

O honored name, revered and undecaying, 
Engraven on each heart, O soul sublime ! 

That, like a planet through the heavens straying, 
Outlives the wreck of time! 

O rough, strong soul, your noble self-possession 
Is unforgotten. Still your work remains. 

You freed from bondage and from vile oppression 
A race in clanking chains. 

O furrowed face, beloved by all the nation ! 

O tall, gaunt form, to memory fondly dear ! 
O firm, bold hand, our strength and our salvation ! 

O heart that knew no fear ! 

Lincoln, your manhood shall survive for ever, 
Shedding a fadeless halo 'round your name ; 

Urging men on, with wise and strong endeavor 
To bright and honest fame ! 

Through years of care, to rest and joy a stranger, 
You saw complete the work you had begun ; 

Thoughtless of threats, nor heeding death or danger, 
You toiled till all was done. 

46 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

You freed the bondman from his iron master, 
You broke the strong and cruel chains he wore ; 

You saved the ship of state from foul disaster, 
And brought her safe to shore. 

You fell ! An anxious nation's hopes seemed blighted, 
While millions shuddered at your dreadful fall ; 

But God is good ! His wondrous hand has righted 
And reunited all. 

You fell, but in your death you were victorious ; 

To molder in the tomb your form has gone, 
While through the world your great soul grows more 
glorious 

As years go gliding on. 

All hail, great chieftain ! Long will sweetly cluster 
A thousand memories 'round your sacred name, 

Nor time nor death shall dim the spotless luster 
That shines upon your fame. 



ON A PICTURE OF LINCOLN 

John Vance Cheney 

I read once more this care-worn, patient face, 
And learn anew that sorrow is the dower 

Of him that sinks himself to lift his race 
Into the seat of peace and power. 

How beautiful the homely features grow, 

How soft the light from out the mild, sad eyes, 

The gleam from deeps of grief the soul must know, 
To be so great, — so kind, so wise ! 

47 



LINCOLN AT GETTYSBURG 

Mary M. Adams 

A nation's voice, a nation's praise, 

Above its honored dead ! 
The spot where on eventful days 

Its heroes fought and bled ! 
The spot where Freedom's spirit spoke 

In words sublime and true, 
And where her trumpet tone awoke 

The old song and the new ! 

The old song with the newer strain, 

To make the first complete 
With melody that lives again 

Through victory and defeat ! 
O sacred spot ! thrice sacred now, 

As years thy record prove ! 
Before thy shrine all patriots bow, 

These shrines all doubts remove! 

The patriot's heart with ardor glows, 

Remembering proffered lives ; 
He hears, in one strong breeze that blows, 

"Life goes, but love survives" — 
The love that stirs a nation's heart, 

And bears a nation's fame 
Wherever brave deeds have a part, 

And men such deeds proclaim. 

He knows its thrilling music tells 

Of those who fell asleep, 
And here found tomb, while muffled bells 

A nation's birthday keep. 
48 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

He hears as well the tender moan 

That in its cadence sings 
For those who sit henceforth alone, 

Whose muffled bell still rings. 

He hears the added strain it bears 

For all who bravely fought, 
For him who in the silence wears 

The scars the battle brought — 
Who wears them with a hero's might, 

And honors still the hour 
That won a nation's priceless right, 

And proved a nation's dower ! 

He hears it when it brings the name 

That won a martyr's crown, 
Our glorious chief, whose stainless fame 

His country's best renown ! 
It brings the matchless words he said, 

Standing above their sod, 
In hour whose burning import led 

A people nearer God. 

It is not ours to dedicate 

This piece of earth so dear, 
Nor is it ours to consecrate 

The deeds men witnessed here ; 
That has been done by those who died, 

On nation's altar slain ; 
They have these hillsides sanctified ; 

Oh, prove it not in vain ! 

Great leader true ! throughout all time 
The world will hear thy voice ; 

Because of thee a holier clime 
Bids liberty rejoice! 

49 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

'Twas fitting you should tell of those 
Who wrote in blood their song, 

And here thy nobler thought disclose 
How nations shall be strong! 

How brave men shall perpetuate 

The freedom bravely won, 
Forbid that treason desecrate 

What loyal sires begun ; 
And here on this great field to-day, 

In memory of thy birth, 
Let nation's love its tribute pay, 

And echo round the earth ! 

But let our labor reach the height 

The larger manhood saw ; 
That broad humanity whose light 

Was Thy diviner law ; 
That law whose good is absolute, 

Whose mandate strong and pure, 
From every ill can good transmute, 

And make its change secure. 

If thus we find our gifts in thee, 

Its vaster strength will live 
To prove its own integrity 

In what we aim to give ; 
In sense of duty nobly met, 

In nature nobly plain, 
In love of men sublimely set 

In diadems of pain. 

In statesmen of heroic mold, 
His country's great high priest, 

Whose human heart could still enfold 
All things the great, the least ; 

50 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Who proved to earth that simple trust 
Is more than Norman blood ; 

That he is crowned who can be just, 
The great must first be good ! 

To love is ever to ascend ; 

Oh, let our love, like thine, 
The nation's highest good attend, 

And with thy spirit shine ! 
Thus shall our tribute catch from thee 

Its worthiest, noblest, best, 
And one united country see, 

Thy life's divine bequest! 

O Gettysburg ! Thy living dead 

Speak still across the years, 
And by thy voice our hearts are led 

Above all passing fears ! 
But keep, O hills ! one record true, 

And one great captain's name! 
Oh, then shall all men look to you 

For nation's deathless fame ! 



GETTYSBURG ODE 

Bayard Taylor 

(Dedication of the National Monument) 

After the eyes that looked, the lips that spake 
Here, from the shadows of impending death, 

Those words of solemn breath, 

What voice may fitly break 
The silence doubly hallowed, left by him? 
We can but bow the head, with eyes grown dim, 

And, as a Nation's litany, repeat 

5i 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

The phrase his martyrdom hath made complete, 
Noble as then, but now more sadly sweet : 
"Let us, the Living, rather dedicate 
Ourselves to the unfinished work, which they 
Thus far advanced so nobly on its way, 

And save the periled State ! 
Let us, upon this field where they, the brave, 
Their last full measure of devotion gave, 
Highly resolve they have not died in vain ! — 
That, under God, the Nation's later birth 

Of Freedom, and the people's gain 
Of their own Sovereignty, shall never wane 
And perish from the circle of the earth !" 
From such a perfect text, shall Song aspire 

To light her faded fire, 
And into wandering music turn 
Its virtue, simple, sorrowful, and stern? 
His voice all elegies anticipated ; 

For, whatsoe'er the strain, 

We hear that one refrain : 
"We consecrate ourselves to them, the Consecrated !" 



THE LINCOLN BOULDER 

Louis Bradford Couch 
(Nyack, New York) 

O Mighty Boulder, wrought by God's own hand, 
Throughout all future ages thou shalt stand 
A monument of honor to the brave 
Who yielded up their lives, their all, to save 
Our glorious country, and to make it free 
From bondsmen's tears and lash of slavery. 

52 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Securely welded to thy rugged breast. 
Through all the coming ages there shall rest 
Our Lincoln's tribute to a patriot band, 
The noblest ever penned by human hand. 

The storms of centuries may lash and beat 
Thy granite face and bronze with hail and sleet ; 
But futile all their fury. In a clay 
The loyal sun shall melt them all away. 

Equal in death our gallant heroes sleep 

In Southern trench, home grave, or ocean deep; 

Equal in glory, fadeless as the light 

The stars send down upon them through the night. 

O priceless heritage for us to keep 

Our heroes' fame immortal while they sleep ! 

O God, still guide us with thy loving hand, 
Keep and protect our glorious Fatherland. 

THE CABIN WHERE LINCOLN WAS 
BORN 

Robert Morris 

Only a cabin, old and poor, 

Logs and daubing and creaking door; 

A solemn sentinel pointing back 

Over a century's beaten track, 

To a soul that surmounted poverty's hill, 

And cried back to the world, "You can if you will." 

From his lofty height of power and fame, 
Where honor crowned his humble name, 
He looked to the cabin that gave him birth, 
As the dearest spot of all the earth. 
Though born in a cabin, you still will be lucky 
If your life is like Lincoln of old Kentucky. 

53 



THE MOTHER OF LINCOLN 

Benjamin Davenport House 

Out on the lie of "lowly born!" 

For life has never changed its source 
Since first began its earthly course, 

Nor from its giver came with scorn. 

And they who put in blood their trust, 
Their pride in silk and linen rolled — 
Who band their narrow brows with gold, 

Poor fools, they are but common dust. 

For flesh is but a robe that clings 
About and clothes the principle 
Of lives which in its swathing dwell, 

And only souls are ever kings. 

Ah ! mother of as grand a son 
As ever battled in the van 
To prove the brotherhood of man, 

Such lives as thine are never done. 

Though common ways were ways of thine, 
And all thy walks uncarpeted, 
Thou gav'st to earth a life which led 

A race enchained to Freedom's shrine. 

From out thy hillside hovel came 

An infant's wail, which proved the key 
Of songs of freedom yet to be 

To drown the groans — a nation's shame. 

Who gives an imbecile to reign, 
The worn-out stock of royal line — 
Backed by the lie of "right divine" — 

Is less than handmaid in thy train. 

54 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

We can but wonder, we who read 

The past with backward, searching look, 
Its pages open as a book, 

If thou foresaw where he would lead. 

If, gazing in the embers' glow, 
Thine eyes by dreaming fancy held, 
Thou saw'st the flames that would unweld 

The chains and let the bondsman go ? 

When baby fingers touched thy breast, 

If ever in thy musing then 

Thou dream'dst that hand should guide the pen 
Whose stroke would free a race oppressed ? 

Didst hear, O mother! when blew free 

The winds which through the crannies sighed, 
The sounds of voices as they cried, 

Because the light they could not see? 

Or when the north wind's trumpets blew 
Heardst thou in them wild war's alarms? 
The cannon's roar, or clash of arms 

Where shot-torn battle banners flew? 

Thou wert unstoried and unsung, 

O mother of our mighty dead ! 

Of whom thy life was fountain head, 
Yet History's harp for thee is strung. 

For, from the iron of thy blood 
Was forged the nation-needed life 
Which, when the land was torn with strife, 

Stood Freedom's pharos 'midst the flood. 

55 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

We can not know, thou lost to earth, 
That ever came a dream to thee 
Of what the nation's fate should be, 

Led by the life thou gavest birth ; 

But trust looks forward with belief 

That thou hast fullest knowledge gained, 
Through larger life thou hast attained, 

And hold it as a garnered sheaf. 

That thou hast pierced life curtain's mesh 
With all the soul of sense and sound, 
Unhampered by the narrow bound, 

Of sight and sound of sense of flesh. 

Hast heard the battle sink to rest, 
Succeeded by the thunder roll 
Of welcome to the mighty soul 

Whose life was nurtured at thy breast. 



THE HOUSE WHERE LINCOLN 
DIED 

Robert Mackay 

Above Judea's purple-mantled plain, 

There hovers still, among the ruins lone, 
The spirit of the Christ whose dying moan 

Was heard in heaven, and paid our debt in pain. 

As subtle perfume lingers with the rose, 
Even when its petals flutter to the earth, 
So clings the potent mystery of the birth 

Of that deep love from which all mercy flows. 

56 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Within this house, this room, — a martyr died, 

A prophet of a larger liberty, — 

A liberator setting bondmen free, 
A full-orbed man, above mere mortal pride. 

The cloud-rifts opening to celestial glades 
Oft glimpse him, and his spirit lingers still, 
As Christ's sweet influence breathes upon the hill 

Where the red lily with the sunset fades. 

A little girl, with eyes of heavenly blue, 

Sings through the old place, ignorant of all; 
Her angel face, her cheerful, birdlike call 

Thrilling the heart to life more full, more true. 



THE NEGLECTED GRAVE OF 
LINCOLN'S MOTHER 

James Corbin 

A wooded hill — a low-sunk grave 

Upon the hilltop hoary ; 
The oak tree's branches o'er it wave ; 
Devoid of slab — no record save 

Tradition's story. 

And who the humble dead, that here 

So lonely sleeps? 
And who, as year rolls after year, 
In summer green or autumn sere — 

Comes here and weeps? 

So lone and drear — the forest wild 

Unbroken seems — 
We well might think some forest child, 
Grown tired of hunt or war trail wild, 

Here lies and dreams. 

57 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

But no; no red man of the West 

Inhabits here ; 
These clods so oft by wild beast pressed, 
Now lie upon the breast 

Of one more dear. 

For Lincoln's mother here is laid — 

Far from her son. 
No long procession, false parade 
Of pride or place was here displayed — 

No requiem sung. 

No summer friends were crowded round 

Her humble grave. 
The summer breezes bore no sound, 
Save genuine grief, when this lone mound 

Its echoes gave. 

Her husband and her children dear, 

And neighbors rude, 
Dressed in their hardy homespun gear, 
Were all that gathered round her bier, 

In this lone wood. 

High pile the marble above the breast 

Of chieftain slain ; 
While in the wildwood of the West, 
In tomb by naught but nature dressed, 

His mother's lain. 

Her grave, from art or homage free, 

Neglected lies ; 
And pomp and pride and vanity, 
From this lone grave must ever flee, 

As mockeries. 

58 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

A nation's grief and gratitude 

Bedewed his bier; 
For her who sleeps in solitude, 
In this lone grave in Western wood, 

Have ye no tear? 

And shall the mother of the brave, 

And true and good, 
Lie thus neglected in a grave 
Unfit for menial, clown or knave 

In this drear wood ? 

Oh, nation of the generous free, 

Be this your shame ; 
And let this grave beneath the tree, 
No longer thus neglected be, 

Without a name. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

/. T. Goodman 

A Nation lay at rest. The mighty storm 
That threatened their good ship with direful harm, 
Had spent its fury ; and the tired and worn 
Sank in sweet slumber, as the Springtime morn 
Dawned with a promise that the strife should cease; 
And war's grim face smiled in a dream of peace. 
Oh ! doubly sweet the sleep when tranquil light 
Breaks on the dangers of the fearful night, 
And, full of trust, we seek the dreamy realm 
Conscious a faithful pilot holds the helm, 
Whose steady purpose and untiring hand, 
With God's good grace, will bring us safe to land. 

59 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

And so the Nation rested, worn and weak 
From long exertion — 
God ! What a shriek 

Was that which pierced to farthest earth and sky, 
As though all Nature uttered a death cry ! 
Awake ! Arouse ! ye sleeping warders, ho ! 
Be sure this augurs some colossal woe ; 
Some dire calamity hath passed o'erhead — 
A world is shattered or a god is dead ! 

What ! the globe unchanged ! The sky still flecked 
With stars? Time is? The universe not wrecked ? 
Then look ye to the pillars of the State ! 
How fares it with the Nation's good and great? 
Since that wild shriek told no unnatural birth 
Some mighty Soul has shaken hands with earth. 

Lo ! murder hath been done. Its purpose foul 
Hath stained the marble of the Capitol 
Where sat one yesterday without a peer ! 
Still rests he peerless — but upon his bier. 
Ah, faithful heart, so silent now — alack! 
And did the Nation fondly call thee back, 
And hail thee truest, bravest of the land, 
To bare the breast to the assassin's hand ? 

And yet we know if that extinguished voice 
Could be rekindled and pronounce its choice 
Between this awful fate of thine, and one — 
Retreat from what thou didst or wouldst have done, 
In thine own sense of duty, it would choose 
This doom — the least a noble soul could lose. 

There is a time when the assassin's knife 
Kills not, but stabs into eternal life; 
And this was such an one. Thy homely name 
Was wed to that of Freedom, and thy fame 

60 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Hung rich and clustering in its lusty prime ; 
The god of Heroes saw the harvest time, 
And smote the noble structure at the root, 
That it might bear no less immortal fruit. 

Sleep ! honored by the Nation and mankind ! 
Thy name in History's brightest page is shrined, 
Adorned by virtues only, and shall exist 
Bright and adored on Freedom's martyr list. 

The time shall come when on the Alps shall dwell 
No memory of their own immortal Tell; 
Rome shall forget her Caesars, and decay 
Waste the Eternal City's self away ; 
And in the lapse of countless ages, Fame 
Shall one by one forget each cherished name ; 
But thine shall live through time, until there be 
No soul on earth but glories to be free. 



THE MARTYR 

Christopher Pcarcc Cranch 

No, not in vain he died, not all in vain, — 
Our good, great President. This people's hands 
Are linked together in one mighty chain, 
Knit tighter now in triple woven bands, 
To crush the fiends in human mask, whose might 
We suffer, oh, too long ! The devils we must fight 
With fire. God wills it in this deed. This use 
We draw from the most impious murder done 
Since Calvary. Rise, then, O countrymen! 
Scatter the marsh-light hopes of Union won 
Through pardoning clemency. Strike, strike again ! 
Draw closer round the foe a girdling flame ! 
We are stabbed whene'er we spare. Strike, in God's 
name! 

61 



LINCOLN 

Benjamin S. Parker 
(February 12th, 1809— February 12th, 1909) 

Lean child of the rugged hills, 

Warmed by the auroral flame ; 
Thine is a hist'ry that fills 

And thrills the loud trump of fame! 
Swart wielder of axe and maul, 

Companion of toil and care; 
Oh, never at duty's call 

Was a heart more brave to bear — 
More tender to pain, more sure 

To hold to the deathless right 
And calumny's shafts endure 

For sake of the hoped-for light, 
Than thine, O prophet-soul, that held in fee 
The truth that is, the greater truth to be. 

By the cabin's hearth of clay, 

Bent over the sentient page, 
By the wood-fire's fitful ray, 

From the hero and the sage, 
Safe into thy inmost thought 

Absorbing the things most wise 
By Grecian and Roman taught, 

Men see thee, in humble guise, — 
A boy with the morning glow 

Of genius on thy face, — 
A light for the world to know 

Through time's far-reaching space — 
A light, a torch, a flame of living fire 
To lead the way wherever souls aspire. 

62 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Once scoff of the worldly wise 

Who sneered at thy honest fame, 
And with anger-flashing eyes 

Announced it the country's shame 
That the people thronged to see 

As their chosen leader, friend, 
Whose vision was clear to see, 

And who would not break nor bend, 
Though the nation's weight of sin 

Should upon thy shoulders fall 
Through the gathering wrath and din 

Of Bellona's carnival. 
When mummers and maskers should rend the flag, 
And tread it in dust, a dishonored rag. 

Then, with thy hand on the wheel, 

And the world's hope in thy hand, 
With sensitive nerves to feel 

Each throb of pain in the land, 
Quick to the sorrowing's cry, 

Yet firm as the basic rock 
To the war waves roaring by 

And the battle's awful shock; 
What a strong god's task was thine, 

With brother at brother's throat, 
To keep through the strength divine, 

The brave ship of state afloat 
On the sea of nations, where she alone 
Carried Freedom's flag to the breezes thrown. 

The flag of liberty, stained 

By blood of the driven thrall 
That on every new star gained 

Let its festering shadow fall, 



63 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

As a cloud that dripped down gore, 

Polluting the land and sea 
And presaging evermore 

The vict'ry of savagery ; 
Should the freeman hunt the slave, 

As the serf of remorseless ill, 
Or the nation find its grave 

Through the loss of its manly will? 
Right won the forum, but passion brought 
The crush of battle from the clash of thought. 



'&' 



And the wild war thundered on 

And the Union's hope seemed vain, 
Till thy hand was laid upon 

The source of that fetid stain : 
The strokes of thy prophet pen 

That made the millions free 
And cleansed "Old Glory" then, 

For the millions yet to be, 
All glowing with fadeless light 

Deep into the darkness hurled 
To banish the reign of night 

From the empire of the world, 
Appealed to the nobler soul of the race, 
And the army moved with a conqu'ror's pace. 

In sorrow and not in wrath 

Did thine eyes survey the woe — 
War's horrors and aftermath. 

In anguish of friend and foe — 
For thou hadst the Master's art 

To bring to the fainting cheer, 
To solace the breaking heart, 

Or quiet the captive's fear, 



64 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

To free the fond mother's boy 

From a death of ignoble pain ; 
Turn bitterness into joy 

And defeat into future gain, 
And thy opportune humor's gentle play 
Was sunshine and cheer for the darkest day. 

And then, with the end in sight — 

With the dawn's white glow of peace 
Enlarging to fuller light 

With promise of swift increase, 
As the war clouds rolled apart — 

Thy thoughts with forgiveness filled 
And thy sympathetic heart 

By the fatal shot were stilled, 
The people bowed down in tears 

And the night consumed the day, 
But yet through the testing years 

Man yields to thy spirit's sway : 
Death claimed thee ere all thy work was done, 
But thy star was risen, thy glory won. 

O Martyr ! yet more than King, 

Forgive us our feeble words 
And the fading wreaths we bring, 

When voices of free, wild birds, 
The breeze and the prairie flowers, 

Bear thee, in thy western tomb, 
Love's tributes exceeding ours, — 

Perennials of song and bloom : 
Forgive us if we forget, 

When our brooding ills provoke, 
The pattern thy patience set, 

Or shackles thy brave hands broke, 
But forgive us not if our haughty pride 
Has the righteous plea of the weak denied. 

65 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

God keepeth His universe 

And brings the man and the hour 
To strangle each haunting curse 

And banish its evil power, 
And each new crisis finds 

Its hero of lofty soul 
With the strength of myriad minds 

To lead, to redeem, console ; 
But, bearers of hope and light, 

No two are alike, nor cast, 
From shadows of ancient might, 

In molds of an outgrown past : 
Fame knows but one Lincoln — He stands alone- 
The boy from the cabin, our loved, our own. 



LINCOLN 

Wilbur D. Nesbit 

We mark the lowly place where he was born, 

We try to dream the dreams that starred his nights 
When the rude path that ran beside the corn 

Grew to a fair broad way that found the heights ; 
We try to sense the lonely days he knew, 

The silences that wrapped about his soul 
When there came whispers tremulous and true 

Which urged him up and onward to his goal. 

His was the dream-filled world of kindly trees ; 

And marvel-reaches of the prairie lands; 
The brotherhood of fields, and birds, and bees, 

Which magnifies the soul that understands; 
fclis was the school of unremitting toil 

Whose lessons leave an impress strong and deep ; 
His were the thoughts of one close to the soil, 

The knowledge of the ones who sow and reap. 
66 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

And of all this, and from all this, he rose 

Full panoplied, when came his country's call, 
Strong-hearted, and strong-framed to bear the woes 

Which fell on him the bitterest of all. 
And well he wrought, and wisely well he knew 

The strain and stress that should be his alone ; 
He did the task long set for him to do — 

This man who came unfavored and unknown. 

We look to-day, not through Grief's mist of tears, 

Not through glamour of nearness to the great, 
But down the long, long corridor of years 

Where stand the sentinels of Fame and Fate, 
And now we see him, whom men called uncouth, 

Grown wondrous fair beneath the hand of Time, 
And know the love of liberty and truth 

Brings immortality, and makes sublime. 

But, oh, this rugged face with kindly eyes 

Wherein a haunting sorrow ever stays ! 
Somehow it seems that through the sorrow rise 

The echoed visions of his other days, 
That still we may in subtle fancy trace 

The light that led him with prophetic gleams — 
That here we gaze upon the pictured face 

Of one who was a boy that lived his dreams. 



LINCOLN 

John E. Barrett 

Fame's trumpet blows a silver note 
Across the ebbing sea of time, 

And angels on the farther shore 
In rapture chant its song sublime. 

67 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

It sings of peace, of broken chains, 
Of cruel wrong at last made right; 

Of franchised millions lifted up 

From thraldom into freedom's light. 

It tells of manhood's grandest act — 

The liberation of a race 
From centuried oppression's grasp 

And grinding greed to power and place. 

It links the freedom of the slave, 
Upon whose neck a nation's shame 

Was laid through years of tyranny, 
With Lincoln's everlasting name. 



TO A PORTRAIT OF ABRAHAM 
LINCOLN 

Edith Colby Banfield 

Thy rugged features more heroic are 

Than chiselled outlines of some godlike Greek; 
Thy steadfast lips more eloquent did speak 

Than lips of orators renowned afar; 

While gentle wit and tolerance of folly, 
And human sympathies and love of right 
Shone never with more kind and steady light 

Than from the cavern of thy melancholy. 

O prophet sorrowful, did thy deep eyes 

Foresee and weep thy country's agonies? 
And did thy lonely heart foreread thy doom 
To give thy brow such majesty of gloom? 

Ah, hadst thou seen the end, thou still hadst led 

Thy people with the same unswerving tread ! 
68 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Alice Cary 
(Foully Assassinated, April, 1865. Inscribed to Punch) 

No glittering chaplet brought from other lands! 

As in his life, this man, in death, is ours; 
His own loved prairies o'er his "gaunt gnarled hands" 

Have fitly drawn their sheet of summer flowers. 

What need hath he now of a tardy crown, 

His name from mocking sneer and jest to save? 

When every plowman turns his furrow down 
As soft as though it fell upon his grave. 

He was a man whose like the world again 
Shall never see, to vex with blame or praise : 

The landmarks that attest his bright, brief reign 
Are battles, not the pomps of gala-days ! 

The grandest leader of the grandest war 
That ever time in history gave a place ; 

What were the tinsel flattery of a star 

To such a breast ! or what a ribbon's grace ! 

'Tis to the man, and the man's honest worth, 
The nation's loyalty in tears upsprings ; 

Through him the soil of labor shines henceforth 
High o'er the silken braideries of kings. 

The mechanism of external forms — 

The shifts that courtiers put their bodies through, 
Were alien ways to him — his brawny arms 

Had other work than posturing to do! 

69 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Born of the people, well he knew to grasp 

The wants and wishes of the weak and small; 

Therefore we hold him with no shadow clasp — 
Therefore his name is household to us all. 

Therefore we love him with a love apart 
From any fawning love of pedigree — 

His was the royal soul and mind and heart — ■ 
Not the poor outward shows of royalty. 

Forgive us then, O friends, if we are slow 
To meet your recognition of his worth — 

We're jealous of the very tears that flow 

From eyes that never loved a humble hearth. 



LINCOLN 

5*. Weir Mitchell 
(Newport, October, 1891) 

Chained by stern duty to the rock of state, 
His spirit armed in mail of rugged mirth, 
Ever above, though ever near the earth, 

Yet felt his heart the vulture beaks that sate 

Base appetites, and foul with slander, wait 
Till the keen lightnings bring the awful hour 
When wounds and sufferings shall give them power. 

Most was he like to Luther, gay and great, 

Solemn and mirthful, strong of heart and limb. 
Tender and simple too ; he was so near 
To all things human that he cast out fear, 

And, ever simpler, like a little child, 
Lived in unconscious nearness unto Him 

Who always on earth's little ones hath smiled. 

70 



OUR GOOD PRESIDENT 

Phoebe Cary 

Our sun hath gone down at the noon-day, 

The heavens are black ; 
And over the morning, the shadows 

Of night-time are back. 

Stop the proud boasting mouth of the cannon ; 

Hush the mirth and the shout ; — 
God is God ! and the ways of Jehovah 

Are past finding out. 

Lo ! the beautiful feet on the mountains, 

That yesterday stood, 
The white feet that came with glad tidings 

Are dabbled in blood. 

The Nation that firmly was settling 

The crown on her head, 
Sits like Rizpah, in sackcloth and ashes, 

And watches her dead. 

Who is dead ? who, unmoved by our wailing, 

Is lying so low? 
O my Land, stricken dumb in your anguish, 

Do you feel, do you know, 

That the hand which reached out of the darkness 

Hath taken the whole; 
Yea, the arm and the head of the people, 

The heart and the soul ? 

And that heart, o'er whose dread awful silence 

A nation has wept ; 
Was the truest, the gentlest, the sweetest, 

A man ever kept. 

7i 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Why, he heard from the dungeons, the rice-fields 

The dark holds of ships, 
Every faint, feeble cry which oppression 

Smothered down on men's lips. 

In her furnace, the centuries had welded 

Their fetter and chain ; 
And like withes, in the hands of his purpose, 

He snapped them in twain. 

Who can be what he was to the people, — 

What he was to the state ? 
Shall the ages bring to us another 

As good and as great ? 

Our hearts with their anguish are broken, 

Our wet eyes are dim ; 
For us is the loss and the sorrow, 

The triumph for him! 

For, ere this, face to face with his Father 

Our martyr hath stood ; 
Giving into His hand a white record, 

With its great seal of blood. 



THE VOICE OF DESTINY 

Lyman Whitney Allen 

The hour was come, and in that hour he stood 
Responsive to the sacred voice that spoke 
From Heaven and earth and sea. 
He heard the dusky toiling multitude 

Plaintively pleading that his hand should break 
Their bonds and set them free. 

J2 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

He heard the voice of God from shining height, 
Who, for the reason of the Nation's sin, 
Had held her armies back 
In failure and defeat, till she should right 

The wrongs herself had sanctioned, and should win 
Justice unto her track ; 

When, girded with the strength of righteousness, 
God for her, with descending seraphim, 
Above the battle's tide, 
She then would march to triumph, and possess 
A land united to the farthest rim, 
Through sorrow purified. 

THE MARTYR 

Herman Melville 

(Indicative of the Passion of the People on the 15th of 
April, 1865) 

Good Friday was the day 

Of the prodigy and crime, 
When they killed him in his pity, 

When they killed him in his prime 
Of clemency and calm — 

When with yearning he was filled 

To redeem the evil-willed, 
And, though conqueror, be kind ; 

But they killed him in his kindness, 

In their madness, in their blindness, 
And they killed him from behind. 

There is sobbing of the strong, 

And a pall upon the land ; 
But the People in their weeping 

Bare the iron hand : 
Beware the People weeping 

When they bare the iron hand. 
73 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

He lieth in his blood — 
The father in his face ; 

They have killed him, the Forgiver — 
The Avenger takes his place, 

The Avenger wisely stern, 

Who in righteousness shall do 
What the heavens call him to, 

And the parricides remand ; 

For they killed him in his kindness, 
In their madness and their blindness, 

And his blood is on their hand. 

There is sobbing of the strong, 
And a pall upon the land ; 

But the People in their weeping 
Bare the iron hand : 

Beware the People weeping 
When they bare the iron hand. 



THE DEAR PRESIDENT 

John James Piatt 

(April 19th, 1865) 

Abraham Lincoln, the Dear President, 

Lay in the Round Hall at the Capitol, 

And there the people came to look their last. 

There came the widow, weeded for her mate ; 
There came the mother, sorrowing for her son ; 
There came the orphan, moaning for its sire. 

There came the soldier, bearing home his wound ; 
There came the slave, who felt his broken chain ; 
There came the mourners of a blackened land. 

74 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Through the dark April day, a ceaseless throng, 
They passed the coffin, saw the sleeping face, 
And, blessing it, in silence moved away. 

And one, a poet, spake within his heart : 
"It harmed him not to praise him when alive, 
And me it shall not harm to praise him dead. 

'Too oft the muse has blushed to speak of men — 
No muse shall blush to speak her best of him, 
And still to speak her best of him is dumb. 

"O lofty wisdom's low simplicity! 
O awful tenderness of voted power! — 
No man e'er held so much of power so meek. 

"He was the husband of the husbandless, 
He was the father of the fatherless: 
Within his heart he weighed the common woe. 

"His call was like a father's to his sons ! 
As to a father's voice, they, hearing, came — 
Eager to offer, strive, endure, and die. 

"The mild bond-breaker, servant of the Lord, 
He took the sword, but in the name of Peace, 
And touched the fetter, and the bound was free. 

"Oh, place him not among historic kings, 
Strong, barbarous chiefs and bloody conquerors, 
But with the great and pure Republicans : 

"Those who have been unselfish, wise and good, 
Bringers of Light and Pilots in the Dark, 
Bearers of Crosses, Servants of the World. 

"And always, in his Land of birth and death, 
Be his fond name — warmed in the people's hearts- 
Abraham Lincoln, the Dear President." 

75 



LINCOLN 

Benjamin S. Parker 
(Indianapolis, April 30th, A. D. 1865) 

The voice is hushed, the heart is still, 

No light is in the earnest eye 
That lately looked on war's wild ill 

And wept where fallen heroes lie. 

We kindle brightly to thy praise, 
We melt in sorrow at thy bier, 

And wonder, in the boundless days, 
When God shall every truth insphere 

In worlds all wisdom, all delight, 

What crowns thy spirit brow shall wear, 

When past the terror and the night, 
Thou soarest into morning there. 

O choral lips of love and song! 

The world's harmonic multitude 
That through the ages dim and long, 

Have prophesied the coming good, — 

Philosopher and saint and seer. 

Of every age and race and clime, — 

Behold the promised days are near, 
Auroral on the hills of time. 

We read the blessed morrow's sign, 
That comes to hallow every place, 

In every feature, every line 

Of that upturned and calmest face. 
76 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

From this dear sacrifice we learn 

That future's full reality, 
How freedom's flame shall mount and burn 

Above the tomb of slavery. 

How age on age shall pile its weight ; 

Yet through the twilight dim and far, 
Among the wise and good and great, 

Shall Lincoln shine, a morning star. 

The useless lash, the broken chain, 
Black swarms of traffic turn to men, 

War fruiting with eternal gain, 
That ripens into peace again. 

These glorify the places where 

Thy paths have been, O true and brave ! 
And these inspire the prairie air 

To sing its rest above thy grave. 

Rest ! patriot, martyr, savior, friend, 
Defender of the poor and weak ! 

Thy glory shall not have an end 

While history has a voice to speak. 



THE VISION OF ABRAHAM 
LINCOLN 

Wendell Phillips Garrison 
(April 14th, 1865) 

Dreaming, he woke, our Martyr President, 
And still the vision lingered in his mind, 
(Problem at once and prophecy combined)- 

A flying bark with all her canvas bent: 

77 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Joy-bringing herald of some great event 

Oft when the wavering scale of war inclined 
To Freedom's side; now how to be divined 

Uncertain, since rebellion's force was spent. 

So, of the omen heedful, as of Fate, 

Lincoln with curious eye the horizon scanned : 

At morn, with hopes of port and peace elate; 
At night, like Palinurus — in his hand 

The broken tiller of the Ship of State — 

Flung on the margin of the Promised Land. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

James Nicoll Johnston 
(Lying in State in Buffalo, April 27th, 1865) 

Bear him to his Western home, 

Whence he came four years ago ; 
Not beneath some Eastern dome, 
But where Freedom's airs may come, 
Where the prairie grasses grow, 
To the friends who loved him so. 

Take him to his quiet rest ; 

Toll the bell and fire the gun ; 
He who served his country best, 
He whom millions loved and bless'd, 

Now has fame immortal won ; 

Rack of brain and heart is done. 

Shed thy tears, O April rain! 
O'er the tomb wherein he sleeps ! 

Wash away the bloody stain ! 

Drape the skies in grief, O rain ! 
Lo! a nation with thee weeps, 
Grieving o'er her martyred slain. 

73 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

To the people whence he came, 
Bear him gently back again, 

Greater his than victor's fame; 

His is now a sainted name ; 
Never ruler had such gain — 
Never people had such pain. 



LINCOLN 

Orpheus C. Kerr 
(Robert Henry Newell) 



'Twas needed — the name of a Martyr sublime, 

To vindicate God in that terrible time ! 

'Twas fitting the thunder of Heaven should roll, 

Ere cannon exultant had deafened the soul 

To what in all ages the Maker had taught, 

The pardon of sin is with suffering bought, 

And just was the doom that the lightning should fall 

On him, the supreme and head of us all, 

Ere, blest in his living the triumph to seal, 

The Victor forgot what the Brother should feel. 

For still with the vanquished we shared in the guilt 

That struck us at last to the murderous hilt ; 

And still unto us did the horror belong 

Of helping a brother to wed with the Wrong, 

Till fostered to treason by parent and kin, 

A traitor to both was the child of the sin. 

Then thine to atone for the shame in the end, 

Our gentle First Citizen, Chieftain, and Friend. 

79 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

ii 

And honestly plain as thyself be the verse 

Such living and dying as thine to rehearse ; 

Not tuned to the rhythmical music of art, 

But simple of note as the pulse of the heart 

That answers the touch of the hand on the strings 

When man for the noblest humanity sings. 

From page unto page of thy story we trace 

The strength of thy manhood, the light of thy face 

Thy merciful soul and thy wisdom are there; 

An honesty open and clear as the air ; 

A spirit to mold from the fetters of birth, 

A crown for a peer of the kings of the earth; 

A nature to wear in the palace of State 

The mind of the humble that stand in the gate; 

A grace, of humanity's brotherhood bred, 

To bend with the wrong to the lowliest head ; 

To bear up the height unto Freedom the Slave, 

And find upon Pisgah his thanks — and a grave ! 

in 

How pure is the luster of virtues that climb 
Imperial summits of power in their time, 
Unaided by patronage, conquest, or birth, 
But lifted aloft by the magic of worth : 
Like jewels in primal reflection that shine, — 
Not drawn from a casket, but raised from the mine, 
A growth from the sunless domain of the moles, 
Yet born with a splendor of light in their souls! 
Behold where the boy at the plow in the West 
Inherits such virtues to glow in his breast : 
He knows not his riches ; he bends to his toil, 
Where scant is the harvest and stubborn the soil ; 
While broods in his bosom such patience serene 
As giveth to labor its tenderest mien. 

80 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

None tell to the liegeless of houses and lands 
The fate of a people shall rest in his hands ; 
Yet sleeps there a might in the calm of his eye 
To rescue a nation from death — and to die! 

IV 

Oh, bitterest lot that the lowly can find, 

Where labor's monotony crushes the mind, 

Till poverty, prisoned in poverty still, 

To dust is degraded, or maddened to kill. 

'Tis thus in the countries far over the sea, 

But happy the poor man, my Country, in thee ; 

For wide over thee may his industry range, 

And sweeten his toil with the blessing of change. 

From tracing the furrow and planting the grain, 

The youth turneth back and forsaketh the plain : 

He mates with the boatmen, and joins in their song, 

Where rolleth the Father of Waters along: 

Still patient with fortune, still earnest to bear 

What God and humanity mark for his share. 

None read from the future his glorious fate, 

To stand at the helm of the vessel of State, 

Its stay till the night and the tempest are done, 

And then into Heaven go up with the sun ! 



Well tried is the genius that rises to rule 

From lessons of man in adversity's school : 

Ill-balanced by honors too lavishly flung, 

It scorneth the level from which it hath sprung; 

Imbittered with contest with rank as it rose, 

Its texture is iron that hardens with blows ; 

Or, true to the balance, in victory mild, 

It tow'rs like a mountain grown up from the wild ; 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Broad-set at its base in the primitive clod, 

To shrink to a spire of the temple of God. 

So he, in a grander simplicity hale, 

Goes up to a height from obscurity's vale ; 

So, true to the lowly, sublime to the high, 

To these he lends counsel, with those in his eye : 

"Half Free and half Slave the Republic must fall; 

Yet saved it shall be," are his words for us all ! 

Time put him to proof when the issue was tried — 

He lived for the Deed, for the Principle died ! 

VI 

Now, borne on his countrymen's louder acclaim, 

He mounts to the station most noble of fame ; 

A chief in the halls where a Washington stood, 

And like unto him as the good to the good ; 

Foul Treason has risen, its horrors flame forth 

To rouse from their slumbers the souls of the North, 

And pealeth from cities, from prairies and farms, 

The rallying cry of the loyal in arms. 

War breaks on the Nation, she enters the strife 

And struggles with traitors for Honor and Life! 

Where dwelleth the spirit her being to save 

From murderers bred in the toil of the slave? 

The Capitol answers : the spirit is there, 

And holdeth its court in the President's chair. 

That nature so gentle containeth a will 

Which glows like a fire in an air that is still — 

Alas! that our pillar of guidance by night 

Should fade from the world at the coming of light! 

VII 

Why follow the record ? His glories are told 
In all that the people the tenderest hold : 
A nation redeemed, and her banner unfurled 
The fairest, the strongest, the best in the world. 

82 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Henceforth be that banner to patriot eyes 

A prayer from its Shepherd of Stars in the skies, — 

To plead that no judgment in malice may fall, 

To speak for a charity free unto all, 

To glow on the sword that is drawn for the Right, 

While merciful still in the midst of the fight: 

Henceforth be its legend for ages to view, 

Its stripes of the dawn and its planeted blue, 

That ere from its story the darkness was torn, 

A something of Heaven shed blood on the morn, 

In sign that 'tis given the godlike of earth 

To pass through a death for the millions' new birth,- 

To die of the night's weary vigil and care, 

When day the eternal first whitens the air. 



LINCOLN'S LAST DREAM 

Hesekhh Buttcrivorth 

I 

April flowers were in the hollows; in the air were 

April bells, 
And the wings of purple swallows rested on the battle 

shells. 
From the war's long scene of horror now the nation 

found release; 
All the day the old war bugles blew the blessed note of 

peace. 
'Thwart the twilight's damask curtains 

Fell the night upon the land, 
Like God's smile of benediction 

Shadowed faintly by his hand. 
In the twilight, in the dusklight, in the starlight, every- 
where, 
Banners waved like garden flowers in the palpitating 

air. 

83 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 
ii 

In Art's temple there were greetings, gentle hurryings 

of feet, 
And triumphant strains of music rose amid the num- 
bers sweet, 
Soldiers gathered, heroes gathered, women beautiful 

were there : 
Will he come, the man Beloved, there to rest an hour 

from care? 
Will he come who for the people 

Long the cross of pain has borne, — 
Prayed in silence, wept in silence, 

Held the hand of God alone? 
Will he share the hour of triumph, now his mighty 

work is done? 
Here receive the people's plaudits, now the victory is 

won? 

in 

O'er thy dimpled waves, Potomac, softly now the 

moonbeams creep; 
O'er fair Arlington's green meadows, where the brave 

forever sleep, 
"Pis Good Friday; bells are tolling, bells of chapel beat 

the air 
On thy quiet shores, Potomac; Arlington, serene and 

fair. 
And he comes, the nation's hero, 

From the White House, worn with care ; 
Hears the name of "Lincoln !" ringing 

In the thronged streets everywhere; 
Hears the bells, — what memories bringing to his long- 
uplifted heart! 
Hears the plaudits of the people as he gains the Hall of 

Art. 

84 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 
rv 

Throbs the air with thrilling music, gayly onward 

sweeps the play ; 
But he little heeds the laughter, for his thoughts are 

far away ; 
And he whispers faintly, sadly, "Oft a blessed Form I 

see, 
Walking calmly 'mid the people on the shores of Gali- 
lee; 
Oft I've wished His steps to follow, 

Follow Him, the Man Divine ; 
When the cares of state are over, 

I will go to Palestine, 
And the paths the Blessed followed I will walk from 

sea to sea, 
Follow Him who healed the people on the shores of 

Galilee." 



Hung the flag triumphant o'er him ; and his eyes with 

tears were dim, 
Though a thousand eyes before him lifted oft their 

smiles to him. 
Forms of statesmen, forms of heroes, women beautiful 

were there, 
But it was another vision that had calmed his brow of 

care: 
Tabor glowed in light before him, 

Carmel in the evening sun ; 
Faith's strong armies grandly marching 

Through the vale of Esdralon : 
Bethany's palm-shaded gardens, where the Lord the 

sisters met, 
And the Pascal moon arising o'er the brow of Olivet. 

85 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

VI 

Now the breath of light applauses rose the templed 

arches through, 
Stirred the folds of silken banners, mingled red and 

white and blue ; 
But the Dreamer seemed to heed not : rose the past his 

eyes before, — 
Armies guarding the Potomac, flashing through the 

Shenandoah ; 
Gathering armies, darkening navies, 

Heroes marching forth to die ; 
Chickamauga, Chattanooga, 

And the Battle of the Sky ; 
Silent prayers to free the bondmen in the ordeal of fire, 
And God's angel's sword uplifted to fulfill his heart's 

desire. 



VII 

Thought he of the streets of Richmond on the late 
triumphant day 

When the swords of vanquished leaders at his feet sur- 
rendered lay ; 

When, amid the sweet bells ringing, all the sabled 
multitudes 

Shouted forth the name of "Lincoln!" like a rushing 
of the floods; 
Thought of all his heart had suffered; 

All his struggles and renown ; 
Dreaming not that just above him 
Lifted was the martyr's crown; 

Seeing not the dark form stealing through the music- 
haunted air ; 

Knowing not that 'mid the triumph the betrayer's feet 
were there. 

86 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

VIII 

Flash! what scymetar of fire lit the flag with lurid 

light ? 
Hush! what means the shuddering silence, what that 

woman's shriek of fright ? 
Puff of smoke? the call-bell ringing? why has stopped 

the airy play ? 
Why the fixed looks of the players that a moment past 

were gay? 
Why the murmurings, strange, uncertain, 

Why do faces turn so white, 
Why descends the affrighted curtain 

Like a wild cloud 'thwart the sight? 
Why the brute cries? why the tumult? Has Death 

found the Hall of Art? 
Hush ! What say those quivering whispers turning 

into stone each heart ? 



IX 

April morning; flags are blowing; 'thwart each flag a 

sable bar. 
Dead the leader of the people ; dead, the world's great 

commoner. 
Bells on the Potomac tolling; tolling by the Sangamon; 
Tolling from the broad Atlantic to the Ocean of the 

Sun. 
Friend and foe clasp hands in silence, 

Listen to the low prayers said, 
Hear the people's benedictions, 

Hear the nations praise the dead. 
Lovely land of Palestine ! he thy shores shall never see, 
But, his dream fulfilled, he follows Him who walked in 

Galilee. 

87 



LINCOLN'S PASSING BELL 

Lucy Larcom 
(April 15th, 1865) 

Tolling, tolling, tolling ! 

All the bells of the land ! 
Lo ! the patriot martyr 

Taketh his journey grand; 
Travels into the ages, 

Bearing a hope how dear! 
Into life's unknown vistas, 

Liberty's great pioneer. 

Tolling, tolling, tolling ! 

Do the budded violets know 
The pain of the lingering clangor 

Shaking their bloom out so ? 
They open into strange sorrow, 

The rain of a nation's tears; 
Into the saddest April 

Twined with the New World's years. 

Tolling, tolling, tolling ! 

See, they come as a cloud, — 
Hearts of a mighty people, 

Bearing his pall and shroud ! 
Lifting up, like a banner, 

Signals of loss and woe! 
Wonder of breathless nations, 

Moveth the solemn show. 

Tolling, tolling, tolling! 

Was it, O man beloved, — 
Was it thy funeral only, 

Over the land that moved ? 
88 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Veiled by that hour of anguish, 
Borne with the rebel rout, 

Forth into utter darkness, 
Slavery's corse went out. 



FOR THE SERVICES IN MEMORY 
OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Oliver Wendell Holmes 

(City of Boston, June ist, 1865— Choral : Luther's 
"Judgment Hymn") 

O Thou of soul and sense and breath, 

The ever-present Giver, 
Unto thy mighty Angel, Death, 

All flesh thou dost deliver ; 
What most we cherish we resign, 
For life and death alike are thine, 

Who reignest Lord forever! 

Our hearts lie buried in the dust 
With him so true and tender, 

The patriot's stay, the people's trust, 
The shield of the offender ; 

Yet every murmuring voice is still, 

As, bowing" to thy sovereign will, 
Our best-loved we surrender. 

Dear Lord, with pitying eye behold 

This martyr generation, 
Which thou, through trials manifold, 

Art showing thy salvation ! 
O let the blood by murder spilt 
Wash out thy stricken children's guilt 

And sanctify our nation ! 

89 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Be thou thy orphaned Israel's friend, 

Forsake thy people never, 
In One our Broken Many blend, 

That none again may sever! 
Hear us, O Father, while we raise 
With trembling lips our song of praise, 

And bless thy name forever! 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Amasa Stetson Condon 
Columbia's prophecy, February 12th, 1809 

Somewhere to-day in dolor and in want, 
Where tears are plenty and bread is scarce, 

And prowling ghosts from a luckless haunt 
Make home a mockery and life a farce; 

Like the dissonant wail from a tuneless chord, 

There the first low wail of a child shall be heard. 

And the large asking eyes full of baby awe, 

That will question the cheer of the wretched den, 

Shall behold, rising out of this cradle of straw, 
A temple ornate with affections of men ; 

And when my bright stars shall be paling their hue, 

Then his hand shall recast the whole field of blue. 

THE FULFILMENT, APRIL 1 4, 1 865 

Let cunning lips that are crafty in speech, 

Praise "My Royal Lord" and his Lady proud ; 
Let pliant tongues loquacious preach 

Of the baron bold and his noble blood; 
Let knights call the names of their fathers up, 

And toast them with jeweled lance in rest, 
But with humble hand I will raise a cup 

To one that is greater than their guest. 
90 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

We will pour from a lip in the tangled horn, 

A milk-white draught that the Crete adored, 
To celebrate a patriot born 

In a tree-nailed box of rough deal board ; 
We will drink to him whose infant eyes 

Looked first on clouds of a leaden hue, 
That hanging dense in the morning skies, 

Hid the Orient beams of the sun from view. 

Till the climax that finished a glorified life, 

These furrowing sorrows he patiently bore ; 
And the long, painful years of a crucial strife 

Scarce added a line to the horologue's score ; 
Like a tell-tale map were his lineaments cast, 

In a mold where sufferings had graved their trace ; 
And always pursuing, this ghost of the past 

Told the story pathetic on his face. 

But the boy crept out of poverty's bed, 

To follow the sibyl's magic wand ; 
And always thereafter, where duty led, 

They journeyed together, hand in hand; 
Thou canst trace the stars in the ebon night, 

As they answer the beck of some hidden force; 
But how little thou know'st of the subtle might 

That drives them along in their silent course. 

So the playful sprite weaves a silken net, 

But its meshes are strong as a web of steel ; 
At a turn in the path the snare is set 

Where no vigilant eye can its presence reveal ; 
A captive thenceforth in the fairy train, 

Where censure condemns or glad salvos ring; 
But ever he follows the tractile chain, 

A beggar to-day, but to-morrow — a king. 

91 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

The hills that grew brown in the bitter breath 

That sifted through clouds the winged snow, 
Will sprinkle with blossoms this realm of death, 

When the south wind coaxes the buds to blow ; 
So genius, if fettered, will languish in gloom, 

Till a herald proclaims the appointed day ; 
Then 'twill burst the strong door of its sullen tomb, 

If some angel but roll the stone away. 

But the tide of events flows white from the shore, 

To bear him away on its stormy breast ; 
O proud Illinois, he is thine no more ! 

He belongs to the world as thy sacred bequest ; 
There's the altar prepared for this gift of thy love, 

And the fire, and the dirge, and the buffeting throng ; 
But only the Father in Heaven above 

Can fathom the bounty to outrage and wrong. 

But the time is at hand when this man will be tried, 

As gold in a furnace that's heated seven-fold ; 
If the metal be base we will cast it aside, 

But fire shall determine which is dross, which is 
gold ; 
Let the cynic behold, for the trial begins, 

And the test is of wisdom and courage combined ; 
If his arm be of reed he will fail; if he wins, 

He's the stuff that makes gods of mankind. 

On the tempest-torn main, in the offing out yonder, 

The waves clasp the sky and sink down with a roar, 
And rolling together with tumult and thunder, 

Break white o'er the sea-wall that circles the shore; 
Like the wing of a bird on a faint rim of sky, 

Or the shadow of hope we see in a dream, 
The proud Ship of State shakes her canvas on high, 

Defying the storm and the lightning's red gleam. 

92 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

But pirates have shifted the buoys from the bar 

To the land-girted harbor, as signals of woe; 
And pirates are coaxing where th' gray breakers are, 

And the ship has a deck-load of pirates below ; 
But the Lincoln that slept in a cradle of straw, 

Stood brave on the bridge with trumpet in hand ; 
And, peering through darkness and tempest, he saw 

The only safe roadstead that led to the land. 



But away with these symbols that baffle my muse, 
And tangle the gait of a smooth-flowing song; 

So to happy-eyed Metaphor waving a truce, 
On sturdy Pegasus I'll gallop along. 



At a snug little farm-house that stands on a hill, 

A widow grief-stricken bequeathes her last son ; 
And a fair girl will wait at the tryst by the mill, 

Whose white lips will whisper "Good-bye;" and he's 
gone. 
So the villager's hope and the rich city's pride, 

With music that chases the echoes afar, 
Float down the broad streets in a living tide, 

To join in the glory and murder of war. 

How graphic the picture that drops from a pen 

While a-painting of scenes from those long years of 
dread, 
From the fear in the souls of the children of men, 

As they read the long lists of sacrificed dead ; — 
From the dews of the South turned to red showers of 
rain 

That guttered the turf on the rolling lea, — 
From the crimson-lipped bud on the conscious plain, — 

From the grave where Death held his wild jubilee! 

93 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

In yon pretty cottage contentment once reigned, 

And all the bright dreams that thrift could inspire, 
Now a prey in the grasp of demons unchained, 

And melting away in the hot tongues of fire; 
The playground once sacred to childhood's retreat, 

With its carpet of green that lay soft on the earth, 
Now trod to a mire by vandal-shod feet, 

And still as the grave are the voices of mirth. 

There's the far-reaching lawn ; in the arbor below 

Was the rope-braided gig that swept close by the 
spring; 
But the leaves have grown black in the path of the foe, 

And a halter is made of the children's swing; 
The slow-throbbing drum, and the fife's wailing cry, 

And the voice of a wretch in his brief epilogue, 
Proclaim the last act in the fate of a spy, 

Who faces the doom of a dishonored dog. 

There the smooth-flowing sea has extinguished its 
foam, 
And soft on its bosom the night tapers burn; 
While the sailor-boy dreams of his sweetheart and 
home, 
And the friends of his youth that await his return ; 
But a black skulking shadow through darkness less 
black, 
Like a fire-breathing courser, plows over the main; 
And swift as a sleuth-hound that is hot on the track, 
Submerges its prey in a white-foaming grave. 

And thus through the years burned the passions of 
hate, 

As if Satan's new reign on the earth had begun; 
Inciting to murder the filial ingrate, 

And guiding the knife to the throat of the son; 

94 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Braiding haloes of flame from a blistered sky, 
Whose fires put to shame the mad rocket's light ; 

And the iron messengers screaming by 

To gash the red earth in their random flight. 

But true to his trust, and with "Right" for his guide, 

'Mid contention at home and confusion abroad, 
He held on his way till the foe's humbled pride 

Had thrown down the altars set up to their god ; 
But how oft, when his own heart was bursting with 
care, 

Did he pause an encouraging word to bestow ; — 
To patiently heed a supplicant's prayer, 

And speak peace to a mind distracted with woe. 

But peace spread her wings to the gaze of the world, 

And the stars sang again in the angels' employ ; 
While the turbulent banners of discord were furled, 

And the laughing sky rocked with hosannas of joy. 
When the battlefield buzzards had stilled their hoarse 
cry, 

And the spirit of hate had fettered its rage; 
Then a blow struck him down like a bolt from the sky ! 

O God, could I cancel this blot from my page ! 

But the record is made, and the world knows the 
rest : — 

How it smothered in flowers the grief on his bier ; 
And mourned him, of men the truest and best, 

That had lived out the span of a mortal's career; 
Yes, the record is made, and this man has been tried 

As gold in a furnace that's heated seven-fold ; 
But the urn holds no dross to throw idly aside, 

For fire hath determined the whole mass is gold. 



95 



LINCOLN 

B. F. M. Soars 

Over snowy fields of cotton, 

Bend the faces brown and eager ; 

Over snowy fields of cotton 

Bend the forms with raiment meager. 

Theirs the labor, theirs the sunshine, 
^ Theirs the lash and curse and sorrow; 

Theirs the pleading prayers to Heaven 
For some happier to-morrow ; 

Theirs the suffering of the years, 

And the woe and bitter tears. 

On all fields of strain and struggle 
Was the black man ever toiling; 

On all wide plantation stretches 
Was his freeborn soul recoiling. 

There were masters kind and gentle, 

^ There were masters with their lashes — 

See ! the age adown the gorges 
Of the wild range madly dashes ! 

Whither ? Whither ? Ah ! which way ? 

Earth shall know thy judgment day ! 

On the block were little babies 

Sold from mothers' warm embraces ; 
On the block were sold to demons 

Gentle lives with girlish graces ; 
On the block were husbands, praying, 

Rent from wives all weeping, pleading, 
Shrieking in their dread undoing, 

With no strong one interceding — 
Crime ! crime trod that horrid path 
'Neath the God of holy wrath. 

96 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Dark — all dark ! O for the breaking 

Of the clamp, dark night all dreary! 
Where is rest, is rest and rapture 

For the sorrowful and weary? 
See! the first faint streaks of dawning 

Seem to make the cold sky shiver — 
There ! athwart the eastern meadows 

Do the red streaks blend and quiver! 
Does there dawn a brighter day ? 
The glad morn is on its way. 

Nightmare ? Yes ; unrest and tossing 

Seemed to shake the nation's slumber ; 
There were specters and hobgoblins, 

There were ghosts which baffled number. 
Old John Brown cast long his shadow 

In the lurid lightning flashes ; 
Many another seemed to startle; 

Then the dreamer, ghost-mad, dashes, 
For the bad, and for the good, 
To bathe brother swords in blood. 

For a meteor flashed across the sky, 

And it filled the world with dread ; 
And the flash and the clash of brothers' swords 

Piled field on field with dead : 
For God had bathed his sword in Heaven 

To lay a demon low, 
To drive a nation to its knees — 

Stubborn — by blow on blow ! 
And a meteor flashed across the sky 
That the inhuman thing might die. 

Lincoln ! Lincoln ! born to scatter 
Shackles from the human cattle — 

Born to throne the human instincts 
High above the sullen battle 

97 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

For the purse and pride and pleasure 
Of a master — born to woo him 

For his diadem of glory, 

Bringing joy and manhood to him — ■ 

There are millions of men free 

Who have not forgotten thee ! 

For the broken shaft was noble 

Though a foeman did it sever; 
And the glory of thee, chieftain, 

Will be sung by bards forever : 
For 'twas God above who sent thee 

To the. black man who was praying, 
To deliver from his bondage, 

And to cease a nation's straying; 
And he wrought the work by thee, 
That thy fellow-man is free. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Monroe Sprowl 

In cabined solitude, beside dim fires at midnight hour, 

While others drowsed and dreamt of Fame's applause, 

This man-to-be carved out his great fulness, 

With purpose stern and true as Pleiades. 

He lit a wondrous light in darkened ways, 

And set all hearts to song with music sweet, 

As when soft, summer rain within the wood 

Sets tender leaves to whispering. Grand Lincoln 

heart — 
Great Alcyone of men, about whom turns 
The universe of Brotherhood. They thought thee poor 
And lonely there amid the knotted rails and granite 

hills, 

98 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

When lo, the skies were thine, and bright Altair 

Thy guiding star! The sad heart-cry 

For liberty thou heardst amid the din 

Of greed and usury, and all thy soul bore down 

Unto the charge, as when at Heaven's gate 

Great Michael thrust old Satan forth. 

At war's Red Sea thy people stood aghast, 

And hearts ebbed low in face of that wild flood, 

'Til thy uplifted hand of crystal faith 

Prevailed with God who guides the Polar sun. 

And lo, in awed retreat the cannoned ranks 

Fell 'way, and o'er the wreckage shone a path sublime 

That led to Peace and happy Freedom's land. 

No greater human heart e'er beat in human cause, 

Than thine, beloved Lincoln, whom we sing, 

As morning stars arise upon the clime 

Thy fair love hath embraced. We hear thee call 

From sinless heights, and pray God we may go 

As sunward ever as thy feet have gone. 



WE ARE COMING, FATHER 
ABRAHAM 

James Sloane Gibbons 

We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred 
thousand more, 

From Mississippi's winding stream and from New 
England's shore; 

We leave our plows and workshops, our wives and 
children dear, 

With hearts too full for utterance and but a silent tear, 

We dare not look behind us, but steadily before. 

We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thou- 
sand more. 

99 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

We are coming, coming, coming; we are coming, 

coming, coming; 
We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred 

thousand more. 

If you look across the hill-tops that meet our Northern 

sky, 
Long moving lines of rising dust your vision may 

descry ; 
And now the wind an instant tears the cloudy veil 

aside, 
And floats aloft our spangled flag in glory and in pride, 
And bayonets in the sunlight gleam and bands brave 

music pour — 
We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thou- 
sand more. 
We are coming, coming, coming; we are coming, 

coming, coming; 
We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred 

thousand more. 



'3 



If you look all down our valleys, where the growing 
harvests shine, 

You may see our sturdy fanner boys fast falling into 
line, 

And children at their mothers' knees are pulling at the 
weeds, 

And learning how to reap and sow against their coun- 
try's needs, 

And a farewell group stands weeping at every cottage 
door — 

We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thou- 
sand more. 
We are coming, coming, coming; we are coming, 

coming, coming; 
We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred 
thousand more. 

ioo 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

You have called us and we're coming by Richmond's 
bloody tide, 

To lay us down for Freedom's sake our brothers' bones 
beside, 

Or from foul treason's savage grasp to wrench the 
murderous blade, 

And in the face of foreign foes its fragments to pa- 
rade ; 

Six hundred thousand loyal men and true have gone 
before — 

We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thou- 
sand more. 
We are coming, coming, coming; we are coming, 

coming, coming ; 
We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred 
thousand more. 



SONNET IN 1862 

John James Piatt 

Stern be the Pilot in the dreadful hour 
When a great nation, like a ship at sea 
With the wroth breakers whitening at her lee, 

Feels her last shudder if the Helmsman cower; 

A godlike manhood be his mighty dower ! 
Such and so gifted, Lincoln, may'st thou be 
With thy high wisdom's low simplicity 

And awful tenderness of voted power: 

From our hot records then thy name shall stand 
On Time's calm ledger out of passionate days- 

With the pure debt of gratitude begun, 
And only paid in never-ending praise — 

One of the many of a mighty Land, 

Made by God's providence the Anointed One. 
101 



AN HORATIAN ODE 

Richard Henry Stoddard 

Not as when some great captain falls 
In battle, where his country calls, 

Beyond the struggling lines 

That push his dread designs. 

To doom, by some stray ball struck dead 
Or in the last charge, at the head 

Of his determined men, 

Who must be victors then ! 

Nor as when sink the civic great, 

The safer pillars of the State, 
Whose calm, mature, wise words 
Suppress the need of swords! — 

With no such tears as e'er were shed 
Above the noblest of our dead 

Do we to-day deplore 

The man that is no more ! 

Our sorrow hath a wider scope, 
Too strange for fear, too vast for hope,- 
A wonder, blind and dumb, 
That waits — what is to come ! 

Not more astonished had we been 
If madness, that dark night, unseen 
Had in our chambers crept, 
And murdered while we slept ! 

102 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

We woke to find a mourning earth — 
Our Lares shivered on the hearth, — 

To roof-tree fallen, — all 

That could affright, appall ! 

Such thunderbolts, in other lands, 
Have smitten the rod from royal hands, 
But spared, with us, till now 
Each laureled Caesar's brow ! 

No Caesar he, whom we lament, 
A man without a precedent, 

Sent it would seem, to do 

His work — and perish too ! 

Not by the weary cares of state, 

The endless tasks, which will not wait, 

Which, often done in vain, 

Must yet be done again : 

Not in the dark wild tide of war, 
Which rose so high, and rolled so far, 

Sweeping from sea to sea 

In awful anarchy : — 

Four fateful years of mortal strife, 
Which slowly drained the nation's life, 
(Yet for each drop that ran 
There sprang an armed man!) 

Not then ; — but when by measures meet,- 

By victory, and by defeat, — 
By courage, patience, skill, 
The people's fixed "We will !" 



103 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Had pierced, had crushed rebellion dead, — 
Without a hand, without a head : — 

At last, when all was well, 

He fell— O, how he fell! 

The time, — the place, — the stealing shape, — 
The coward shot, — the swift escape, — 

The wife, — the widow's scream, — 

It is a hideous dream ! 

A dream? — what means this pageant then? 
These multitudes of solemn men, 

Who speak not when they meet, 

But throng the silent street ? 

The flags half-mast, that late so high 
Flaunted at each new victory ? 

(The stars no brightness shed, 

But bloody looks the red!) 

The cannon's sudden, sullen boom, — 
The bells that toll of death and doom, — 

The rolling of the drums, — 

The dreadful car that comes ? 

Cursed be the hand that fired the shot ! 

The frenzied brain that hatched the plot ! 
Thy country's father slain 
By thee, thou worse than Cain ! 

Tyrants have fallen by such as thou, 
And good hath followed — may it now ! 

(God lets bad instruments 

Produce the best events. ) 



104 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

But he, the man we mourn to-day, 
No tyrant was : so mild a sway 

In one such weight who bore 

Was never known before! 

Cool should he be, of balanced powers, 
The ruler of a race like ours, 

Impatient, headstrong, wild, — 

The man to guide the child ! 

And this he was, who most unfit 
(So hard the sense of God to hit!) 

Did seem to fill his place. 

With such a homely face, — 

Such rustic manners, — speech uncouth, — 
(That somehow blundered out the truth!) 

Untried, untrained to bear 

The more than kingly care ! 

Ay ! And his genius put to scorn 
The proudest in the purple born, 
Whose wisdom never grew 
To what, untaught, he knew — 

The people, of whom he was one. 
No gentleman like Washington, — 

(Whose bones, methinks, make room, 

To have him in their tomb !) 

A laboring man, with horny hands, 
Who swung the axe, who tilled the lands, 

Who shrank from nothing new, 

But did as poor men do ! 



105 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

One of the people ! Born to be 

Their curious epitome ; 
To share, yet rise above 
Their shifting hate and love. 

Common his mind (it seemed so then), 
His thoughts the thoughts of other men : 

Plain were his words, and poor — 

But now they will endure ! 

No hasty fool, of stubborn will, 
But prudent, cautious, pliant, still ; 

Who, since his work was good, 

Would do it, as he could. 

Doubting, was not ashamed to doubt, 
And, lacking prescience, went without : 
Often appeared to halt, 
And was, of course, at fault : 

Heard all opinions, nothing loth, 
And loving both sides, angered both : 
Was — not like justice, blind, 
But watchful, clement, kind. 

No hero, this, of Roman mold ; 
Nor like our stately sires of old : 

Perhaps he was not great — 

But he preserved the State ! 

O honest face, which all men knew ! 
O tender heart, but known to few ! 

O wonder of the age, 

Cut off by tragic rage ! 

1 06 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Peace ! Let the long procession come, 
For hark! — the mournful, muffled drum — 

The trumpet's wail afar, — 

And see! the awful car! 

Peace ! Let the sad procession go, 
While cannon boom, and bells toll slow : 

And go, thou sacred car, 

Bearing our woe afar ! 

Go, darkly borne, from State to State, 
Whose loyal, sorrowing cities wait 

To honor all they can 

The dust of that good man ! 

Go, grandly borne, with such a train 
As greatest kings might die to gain : 

The just, the wise, the brave 

Attend thee to the grave ! 

And you, the soldiers of our wars, 
Bronzed veterans, grim with noble scars, 

Salute him once again, 

Your late commander — slain ! 

Yes, let your tears, indignant, fall, 
But leave your muskets on the wall : 

Your country needs you now 

Beside the forge, the plow ! 

(When justice shall unsheathe her brand,- 
If mercy may not stay her hand, 

Nor would we have it so — 

She must direct the blow !) 



107 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

And you, amid the master-race, 
Who seem so strangely out of place, 

Know ye who cometh ? He 

Who hath declared ye free ! 

Bow while the body passes — nay, 
Fall on your knees, and weep, and pray ! 
Weep, weep — I would ye might — 
Your poor, black faces white ! 

And children, you must come in bands, 
With garlands in your little hands, 

Of blue, and white, and red, 

To strew before the dead ! 

So sweetly, sadly, sternly goes 
The fallen to his last repose: 

Beneath no mighty dome, 

But in his modest home ; 

The churchyard where his children rest, 
The quiet spot that suits him best : 
There shall his grave be made, 
And there his bones be laid ! 

And there his countrymen shall come, 
With memory proud, with pity dumb, 
And strangers far and near, 
For many and many a year ! 

For many a year, and many an age, 
While history on her ample page 

The virtues shall enroll 

Of that paternal soul ! 

1 08 



FROM "OUR HEROIC THEMES" 

George Henry Boker 

Crown we our heroes with a holier wreath 

Than man e'er wore upon this side of death; 

Mix with their laurels deathless asphodels, 

And chime their peans from the sacred bells ! 

Nor in your prayers forget the martyred Chief, 

Fallen for the gospel of your own belief, 

Who, ere he mounted to the people's throne, 

Asked for your prayers, and joined in them his own. 

I knew the man. I see him, as he stands 

With gifts of mercy in his outstretched hands; 

A kindly light within his gentle eyes, 

Sad as the toil in which his heart grew wise; 

His lips half-parted with the constant smile 

That kindled truth, but foiled the deepest guile ; 

His head bent forward, and his willing ear 

Divinely patient right and wrong to hear: 

Great in his goodness, humble in his state, 

Firm in his purpose, yet not passionate, 

He led his people with a tender hand, 

And won by love a sway beyond command, 

Summoned by lot to mitigate a time 

Frenzied with rage, unscrupulous with crime, 

He bore his mission with so meek a heart 

That Heaven itself took up his people's part ; 

And when he faltered, helped him ere he fell, 

Eking his efforts out by miracle. 

No king this man, by grace of God's intent ; 

No, something better, freeman, — President ! 

A nature, molded, modeled on a higher plan, 

Lord of himself, an inborn gentleman! 



109 



WHEN LILACS LAST IN THE 
DOORYARD BLOOMED 

Walt Whitman 



When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed, 

And the great star early drooped in the western sky in 

the night, 
I mourned, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning 

spring. 

Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring, 
Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west, 
And thought of him I love. 

ii 

O powerful western fallen star! 

O shades of night — O moody, tearful night ! 

O great star disappeared — O the black murk that 

hides the star! 
O cruel hands that hold me powerless — O helpless 

soul of me ! 
O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free my soul. 

hi 

In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the 
white-washed palings, 

Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with the heart- 
shaped leaves of rich green, 

With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the 
perfume strong I love, 



no 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

With every leaf a miracle — and from this bush in the 

dooryard, 
With delicate-colored blossoms and heart-shaped leaves 

of rich green, 
A sprig with its flower I break. 



IV 

In the swamp in secluded recesses, 
A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song. 
Solitary the thrush, 

The hermit withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settle- 
ments, 
Sings by himself a song. 

Song of the bleeding throat, 

Death's outlet song of life (for well, dear brother, I 

know, 
If thou wast not granted to sing thou would'st surely 

die). 



Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities, 
Amid lanes and through old woods, where lately the 

violets peeped from the ground, spotting the 

gray debris, 
Amid the grass in the fields each side of the lanes, 

passing the endless grass, 
Passing the yellow-speared wheat, every grain from its 

shroud in the dark-brown fields uprisen, 
Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in the 

orchards, 
Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave, 
Night and day journeys a coffin. 

in 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

VI 

Coffin that passes through lanes and streets, 

Through day and night with the great cloud darkening 

the land, 
With the pomp of the inlooped flags with the cities 

draped in black, 
With the show of the States themselves as of crape- 
veiled women standing, 
With processions long and winding and the flambeaus 

of the night, 
With the countless torches lit, with the silent sea of 

faces and the unbared heads, 
With the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the 

somber faces, 
With the dirges through the night, with the thousand 

voices rising strong and solemn, 
With all the mournful voices of the dirges poured 

around the coffin, 
The dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs — 

where amid these you journey, 
With the tolling, tolling bell's perpetual clang, 
Here, coffin that slowly passes, 
I give you my sprig of lilac. 
(Nor for you, for one alone, 

Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring, 
For fresh as the morning, thus would I chant a song 

for you, O sane and sacred death. 

All over bouquets of roses, 

O death, I cover you over with roses and early lilies, 

But mostly and now the lilac that blooms the first, 

Copious I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes, 

With loaded arms I come, pouring for you, 

For you and the coffins, all of you, O death!) 



112 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

VIII 

O western orb sailing the heaven, 

Now I know what you must have meant as a month 

since I walked, 
As I walked in silence the transparent shadowy night, 
As I saw you had something to tell as you bent to me 

night after night, 
As you dropped from the sky low down as if to my 

side, (while the other stars all looked on,) 
As we wandered together the solemn night, (for some- 
thing I know not what kept me from sleep,) 
As the night advanced, and I saw on the rim of the 

west how full you were of woe, 
As I stood on the rising ground in the breeze in the 

cool transparent night, 
As I watched where you passed and was lost in the 

netherward black of the night, 
As my soul in its trouble dissatisfied sank, as where 

you sad orb, 
Concluded, dropt in the night, and was gone. 

IX 

Sing on there in the swamp, 

singer bashful and tender, I hear your notes, I hear 

your call, 

1 hear, I come presently, I understand you, 

But a moment I linger, for the lustrous star has de- 
tained me, 
The star my departing comrade holds and detains me. 

x 

O how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I 

loved ? 
And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet 

soul that has gone? 
And what shall my perfume be for the grave of him 

I love? 

113 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Sea-winds blown from east and west, 
Blown from the Eastern sea and blown from the West- 
ern sea, till there on the prairies meeting, 
These and with these and the breath of my chant, 
I'll perfume the grave of him I love. 

XI 

O what shall I hang on the chamber walls ? 

And what shall the pictures be that I hang on the 

walls, 
To adorn the burial-house of him I love? 
Pictures of growing spring and farms and homes, 
With the Fourth-month eve at sundown, and the gray 

smoke lucid and bright, 
With floods of the yellow gold of the gorgeous, indo- 
lent, sinking sun, burning, expanding the air, 
With the fresh sweet herbage under foot, and the pale 

green leaves of the trees prolific, 
In the distance the flowing glaze, the breast of the 

river, with a wind-dapple here and there, 
With ranging hills on the banks, with many a line 

against the sky, and shadows, 
And the city at hand with dwellings so dense, and 

stacks of chimneys, 
And all the scenes of life and the workshops, and the 

workmen homeward returning. 

XII 

Lo, body and soul — this land, 

My own Manhattan with spires, and the sparkling and 
hurrying tides, and the ships, 

The varied and ample land, the South and the North 
in the light, Ohio's shores and flashing Mis- 
souri, 

And ever the far-spreading prairies covered with grass 
and corn. 

114 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Lo, the most excellent sun so calm and haughty, 
The violet and purple morn with just- felt breezes, 
The gentle soft-born measureless light, 
The miracle spreading bathing all, the fulfilled noon, 
The coming eve delicious, the welcome night and the 

stars, 
Over my cities shining all, enveloping man and land. 

XIII 

Sing on, sing on, you gray-brown bird, 

Sing from the swamps, the recesses, pour your chant 

from the bushes, 
Limitless out of the dusk, out of the cedars and pines. 

Sing on, dearest brother, warble your reedy song, 

Loud human song, with voice of uttermost woe. 

O liquid and free and tender! 

O wild and loose to my soul — O wondrous singer! 

You only I hear — yet the star holds me, (but will soon 

depart, ) 
Yet the lilac with mastering odor holds me. 

XIV 

Now while I sat in the day and looked forth, 

In the close of the day with its light and the fields of 

spring, and the farmers preparing their crops, 
In the large unconscious scenery of my land with its 

lakes and forests, 
In the heavenly aerial beauty, (after the perturbed 

winds and the storms,) 
Under the arching heavens of the afternoon swift 

passing, and the voices of women and children, 
The many moving sea-tides, and I saw the ships how 

they sailed, 

115 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

And the summer approaching with richness, and the 
fields all busy with labor, 

And the infinite separate houses, how they all went on, 
each with its meals and minutia of daily usages, 

And the streets how their throbbings throbbed, and the 
cities pent — lo, then and there, 

Falling upon them all, and among them all, enveloping 
me with the rest, 

Appeared the cloud, appeared the long, black trail, 

And I knew death, its thought, and the sacred knowl- 
edge of death. 

Then with the knowledge of death as walking one side 
of me, 

And the thought of death close-walking the other side 
of me, 

And I in the middle as with companions, and as hold- 
ing the hands of companions, 

I fled forth to the hiding receiving night that talks not, 

Down to the shores of the water, the path by the 
swamp in the dimness, 

To the solemn shadowy cedars and the ghostly pines 
so still. 

And the singer so shy to the rest received me, 

The gray-brown bird I know received us comrades 

three, 
And he sang the carol of death, and a verse for him I 

loved. 

From deep secluded recesses, 

From the fragrant cedars and the ghostly pines so still, 

Came the carol of the bird. 

And the charm of the carol rapt me, 

As I held as if by their hands my comrades in the 

night, 
And the voice of my spirit tallied the song of the bird. 

116 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Come lovely and soothing death, 

Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving, 

In the day, in the night, to all, to each, 

Sooner or later delicate death. 

Praised be the fathomless universe, 
For life and joy, and for objects and knozvledge curi- 
ous, 
And for love, sweet love — but praise! praise! praise! 
For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding death. 

Dark mother always gliding near with soft feet, 
Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest wel- 
come? 
Then I chant it for thee, I glorify thee above all, 
I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, 
come unfalteringly. 

Approach strong deliver ess, 

When it is so, when thou hast taken them I joyously 

sing the dead, 
Lost in the loving floating ocean of thee, 
Laved in the flood of thy bliss, O death. 

From me to thee glad serenades, 

Dances for thee I propose saluting thee, adornments 
and f eastings for thee, 

And the sights of the open landscape and the high- 
spread sky are fitting, 

And life and the fields, and the huge and thoughtful 
night. 

The night in silence under many a star, 

The ocean shore and the husky whispering wave whose 

voice I knozv, 
And the soui turning to thee, O vast and well-veiled 

death, 
And the body gratefully nestling close to thee. 

117 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Over the tree-tops I float thee a song, 

Over the rising and sinking zvaves, over the myriad 

fields and the prairies wide, 
Over the dense-packed cities all and the teeming 

wharves and ways, 
I float this carol with joy, with joy to thee, death. 

xv 
To the tally of my soul, 

Loud and strong kept up the gray-brown bird, 
With pure deliberate notes spreading filling the night. 
Loud in the pines and cedars dim, 
Clear in the freshness moist and the swamp-perfume, 
And I with my comrades there in the night. 

While my sight that was bound in my eyes unclosed, 
As to long panoramas of visions. 

And I saw askant the armies, 

I saw as in noiseless dreams hundreds of battle-flags, 

Borne through the smoke of the battles and pierced 

with missiles I saw them, 
And carried hither and yon through the smoke, and 

torn and bloody, 
And at last but a few shreds left on the staffs, (and all 

in silence,) 
And the staffs all splintered and broken. 

I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them, 

And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them, 

I saw the debris and debris of all the slain soldiers of 

the war, 
But I saw they were not as was thought, 
They themselves were fully at rest, they suffered not, 
The living remained and suffered, the mother suffered, 
And the wife and the child and the musing comrade 

suffered, 
And the armies that remained suffered. 

118 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

XVI 

Passing the visions, passing the night, 

Passing, unloosing the hold of my comrades' hands, 

Passing the song of the hermit bird and the tallying 
song of my soul, 

Victorious song, death's outlet song, yet varying ever- 
altering song, 

As low and wailing, yet clear the notes, rising and 
falling, flooding the night, 

Sadly sinking and fainting, as warning and warning, 
and yet again bursting with joy, 

Covering the earth and filling the spread of the heav- 
ens, 

As that powerful psalm in the night I heard from re- 
cesses, 

Passing, I leave thee lilac with heart-shaped leaves, 

I leave thee there in the dooryard, blooming, returning 
with spring. 

I cease from my song for thee, 

From my gaze on thee in the west, fronting the west, 

communing with thee, 
O comrade lustrous with silver face in the night. 

Yet each to keep and all, retrievements out of the 

night, 
The song, the wondrous chant of the gray-brown bird, 
And the tallying chant, the echo aroused in my soul, 
With the lustrous and drooping star with the counte- 
nance full of woe, 
With the holders holding my hand nearing the call of 

the bird, 
Comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory 
ever to keep, for the dead I loved so well, 



119 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands 

— and this for his dear sake, 
Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my 

soul, 
There in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and 

dim. 



ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIRTH OF 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Levi Lewis Hager 
(February 12th, 1900) 

This day, upon the scroll of fame, 
We venerate anew his name 
Who healed the wound by brothers made, 
When hostile armies did invade. 

He fell a martyr for his land, 
Struck down by the assassin's hand ; 
But rose immortal, like the star 
Which sends its radiance from afar. 

His praises for the jubilee 
Which did a race from bondage free, 
Will from that people ever rise, 
Like holy incense, to the skies. 

The nation great, united now, 

With heads and hearts do grateful bow 

To do him homage — let it be 

The tribute of his country, free. 



120 



ACCOMPLICES 

Thomas Bailey Aldrich 
(Virginia, 1865) 

The soft new grass is creeping o'er the graves 
By the Potomac ; and the crisp ground-flower 
Lifts its blue cup to catch the passing shower; 

The pine-cone ripens, and the long moss waves 

Its tangled gonfalons above our braves. 

Hark, what a burst of music from yon wood ! 
The Southern nightingale, above its brood, 

In its melodious summer madness raves. 

Ah, with what delicate touches of her hand, 
With what sweet voices, Nature seeks to screen 

The awful Crime of this distracted land, — 

Sets her birds singing, while she spreads her green 

Mantle of velvet where the Murdered lie, 

As if to hide the horror from God's eye! 



THE BIRTHDAY OF ABRAHAM 
LINCOLN 

Mary A. Leavitt 

From the tints and the tones of other years, 
From the bloom of the Far Away, 

What chaplets grateful Memory weaves 
On this anniversary day ! 

How we hear the tramp of marching feet 
And the call of the bugle blast ; 

And the glad acclaim as the troops come home, 
When the terrible war is past ! 
121 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

In the midst of joy, we hear the toll — 

The toll of a funeral bell ! 
From around the globe comes a wail of woe 

That blends in one funeral knell ! 

Joy is struck dead by a crushing blow! 

The nation's deliverer slain ! 
No wonder each heart is whelmed in grief 

And each wind bears a sob of pain ! 

Hallow his tomb, O Illinois ! 

Still sacred keep that shrine 
Where love would twine immortal wreaths, 

And blend her gifts with thine. 

O peerless Leader! but prized too late! 

Strange tear-dimmed eyes now see it all ! 
Abused by foes, misknown by friends — 

Too late, too late, our praises fall ! 



LINCOLN'S BIRTHDAY 

Ida Vose Woodbury 

Again thy birthday dawns, O man beloved, 

Dawns on the land thy blood was shed to save, 

And hearts of millions, by one impulse moved, 
Bow and fresh laurels lay upon thy grave. 

The years but add new luster to thy glory, 
And watchmen on the heights of vision see 

Reflected in thy life the old, old story, 
The story of the Man of Galilee. 

122 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

We see in thee the image of Him kneeling 
Before the close-shut tomb, and at the word 

"Come forth," from out the blackness long concealing 
There rose a man ; clearly again was heard 

The Master's voice, and then, his cerements broken, 
Friends of the dead a living brother see ; 

Thou, at the tomb where millions lay, hast spoken : 
"Loose him and let him go !" — the slave was free. 

And in the man so long in thraldom hidden 
We see the likeness of the Father's face, 

Clod changed to soul ; by thy atonement bidden, 
We hasten to the uplift of a race. 

Spirit of Lincoln ! Summon all thy loyal ; 

Nerve them to follow where thy feet have trod, 
To prove, by voice as clear and deed as royal, 

Man's brotherhood in our one Father — God. 



LINCOLN'S BIRTHDAY 

Nathan Haskell Dole 
(February 12th, 1809) 

As back we look across the ages 
A few great figures meet the eye — 

Kings, prophets, warriors, poets, sages — 
Whose names and deeds will never die. 

The rest are all forgotten, perished, 
Like trees in trackless forests vast, 

But those whose memory men have cherished 
Seem living still and have no past. 
123 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Not always of high race or royal 
These messengers of God to men, 

But lowly-born, true-hearted, loyal, 
They wielded sword or brush or pen. 

Such was our Lincoln, who forever 

Is hailed as Freer of the Slave, 
Whose lofty purpose and endeavor 

New hope to hopeless bondmen gave. 

Gaunt, hewed as if from rugged boulders, 
He bore a world of care and woe, 

Which creased his brow and bent his shoulders, 
And as a martyr laid him low. 

And so we tell our sons his story, 

We celebrate his humble birth, 
And crown his deeds with all the glory 

That men can offer on this earth. 

Hail, Lincoln ! As the swift years lengthen 
Still more majestic grows thy fame; 

The ties that bind us to thee strengthen ; 
Starlike-immortal shines thy name. 



ON READING 
PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S LETTER 

H. L. Gordon 

(Written to Horace Greeley, of Date August 22d, 1862: "If I 

could save the union without freeing any slave, 

I would do it," etc.) 

Perish the power that, bowed to dust, 

Still wields a tyrant's rod — 
That dares not even then be just, 

And leave the rest with God. 
124 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Henry Howard Brozvnell 

Dead is the roll of the drums, 
And the distant thunders die, 
They fade in the far-off sky ; 

And a lovely summer comes, 
Like the smile of Him on high. 

Lulled, the storm and the onset, 
Earth lies in a sunny swoon ; 
Stiller splendor of noon, 

Softer glory of sunset, 

Milder starlight and moon ! 

For the kindly Seasons love us ; 

They smile over trench and clod 
(Where we left the bravest of us,) — 

There's a brighter green of the sod, 
And a holier calm above us 

In the blessed Blue of God. 

The roar and the ravage were vain ; 

And Nature, that never yields, 
Is busy with sun and rain 

At her old sweet work again 

On the lonely battle-fields. 

How the tall white daisies grow, 
Where the grim artillery rolled ! 

(Was it only a moon ago? 
It seems a century old,) — 

125 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

And the bee hums in the clover, 
As the pleasant June comes on ; 

Aye, the wars are all over, — 
But our good Father is gone. 

There was tumbling of traitor fort, 

Flaming of traitor fleet — 
Lighting of city and port, 

Clasping in square and street. 

There was thunder of mine and gun, 

Cheering by mast and tent, — 
When — his dread work all done, 
And his high fame full won — 
Died the Good President. 

In his quiet chair he sate, 

Pure of malice or guile, 
Stainless of fear or hate, — 

And there played a pleasant smile 
On the rough and careworn face; 

For his heart was all the while 
On means of mercy and grace. 

The brave old Flag drooped o'er him, 
(A fold in the hard hand lay,) — 
He looked, perchance, on the play, — 

But the scene was a shadow before him, 
For his thoughts were far away. 

'Twas but the morn, (yon fearful 
Death-shade, gloomy and vast, 
Lifting slowly at last,) 
His household heard him say, 
" 'Tis long since I've been so cheerful, 
So light of heart as to-day." 

126 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

'Twas dying, the long dread clang, — 

But, or ever the blessed ray 

Of peace could brighten to-day, 

Murder stood by the way — 
Treason struck home his fang ! 
One throb — and, without a pang, 

That pure soul passed away. 

Kindly Spirit ! — Ah, when did treason 

Bid such a generous nature cease, 
Mild by temper and strong by reason, 

But ever leaning to love and peace ? 
A head how sober ; a heart how spacious ; 

A manner equal with high or low ; 
Rough but gentle, uncouth but gracious, 

And still inclining to lips of woe. 

Patient when saddest, calm when sternest, 
Grieved when rigid for justice' sake ; 

Given to jest, yet ever in earnest 

If aught of right or truth were at stake. 

Simple of heart, yet shrewd therewith, 
Slow to resolve, but firm to hold ; 

Still with parable and with myth 
Seasoning truth, like Them of old ; 

Aptest humor and quaintest pith ! 

(Still we smile o'er the tales he told.) 

Yet whoso might pierce the guise 
Of mirth in the man we mourn, 

Would mark, and with grieved surprise, 
All the great soul had borne, 

In the piteous lines, and the kind, sad eyes 
So dreadfully wearied and worn. 

127 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

And we trusted (the last dread page 

Once turned, of our Dooms-day Scroll,) 
To have seen him, sunny of soul, 

In a cheery, grand old age. 

But, Father, 'tis well with thee! 

And since ever, when God draws nigh, 
Some grief for the mood must be, 

'Twas well, even so to die, — 

'Mid the thunder of Treason's fall, 
The yielding of haughty town, 

The crashing of cruel wall, 

The trembling of tyrant crown! 

The ringing of hearth and pavement 
To the clash of falling chains, — 

The centuries of enslavement 

Dead, with their blood-bought gains ! 

And through trouble weary and long, 
Well hadst thou seen the way, 

Leaving the State so strong 
It did not reel for a day ; 

And even in death couldst give 
A token for Freedom's strife — 

A proof how republics live, 
And not by a single life, 

But the Right Divine of man, 

And the many, trained to be free, — 

And none, since the world began, 
Ever was mourned like thee. 

128 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Dost thou feel it, O noble Heart ! 

(So grieved and so wronged below,) 
From the rest wherein thou art? 
Do they see it, those patient eyes ? 
Is there heed in the happy skies 

For tokens of world-wide woe? 

The Land's great lamentations, 
The mighty mourning of cannon, 
The myriad flags half-mast — 
The last remorse of the nations, 
Grief from Volga to Shannon ! 
( Now they know thee at last. ) 

How, from gray Niagara's shore 
To Canaveral's surfy shoal — 

From the rough Atlantic roar 
To the long Pacific roll — 
For bereavement and for dole, 

Every cottage wears its weed, 
White as thine own pure soul, — 

And black as the traitor deed. 

How, under a nation's pall, 
The dust so dear in our sight 
To its home on the prairie past, — 
The leagues of funeral, 

The myriads, morn and night, 
Pressing to look their last. 

Nor alone the State's Eclipse; 

But tears in hard eyes gather — 
And on rough and bearded lips, 
Of the regiments and the ships — 
"Oh, our dear Father!" 

129 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

And methinks of all the million 

That looked on the dark dead face, 
'Neath its sable-plumed pavilion, 

The crone of a humbler race 
Is saddest of all to think on, 

And the old swart lips that said, 
Sobbing, "Abraham Lincoln! 

Oh, he is dead, he is dead!" 

Hush ! let our heavy souls 

To-day be glad ; for again 
The stormy music swells and rolls, 

Stirring the hearts of men. 

And under the Nation's Dome, 
They've guarded so well and long, 

Our boys come marching home, 
Two hundred thousand strong. 

All in the pleasant month of May, 
With war-worn colors and drums, 

Still through the livelong summer's day, 
Regiment, regiment comes. 

Like the tide, yeasty and barmy, 
That sets on a wild lee-shore, 

Surge the ranks of an army 
Never reviewed before! 

Who shall look on the like again, 
Or see such host of the brave? 

A mighty River of marching men 
Rolls the Capital through — 

Rank on rank, and wave on wave, 
Of bayonet-crested blue! 

130 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

How the chargers neigh and champ, 
(Their riders weary of camp), 

With curvet and with caracole ! — 
The cavalry comes with thund'rous tramp, 

And the cannons heavily roll. 

And ever, flowery and gay, 
The Staff sweeps on in a spray 

Of tossing forelocks and manes; 
But each bridle-arm has a weed 
Of funeral, black as the steed 

That fiery Sheridan reins. 

Grandest of mortal sights 

The sun-browned ranks to view— 

The Colors ragg'd in a hundred fights, 
And the dusty Frocks of Blue ! 

And all day, mile on mile, 

With cheer, and waving, and smile, 

The war-worn legions defile 

Where the nation's noblest stand ; 
And the Great Lieutenant looks on, 

With the Flower of a rescued land, — 
For the terrible work is done, 
And the Good Fight is won 

For God and the Fatherland. 

So, from the fields they win, 
Our men are marching home, 
A million are marching home ! 

To the cannon's thundering din, 
And banners on mast and dome, — 

And the ships come sailing in 

With all their ensigns dight, 

As erst for a great sea-fight. 

131 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Let every color fly, 

Every pennon flaunt in pride; 
Wave, Starry Flag, on high ! 
Float in the sunny sky, 

Stream o'er the stormy tide ! 
For every stripe of stainless hue, 
And every star in the field of blue, 
Ten thousand of the brave and true 

Have laid them down and died. 

And in all our pride to-day 
We think, with a tender pain, 

Of those so far away 
They will not come home again. 

And our boys had fondly thought, 

To-day, in marching by, 
From the ground so dearly bought, 
And the fields so bravely fought, 

To have met their Father's eye. 

But they may not see him in place, 
Nor their ranks be seen of him ; 

We look for the well-known face, 
And the splendor is strangely dim. 

Perished ? — who was it said 
Our Leader had passed away? 

Dead ? Our President dead ? 
He has not died for a day ! 

We mourn for a little breath 

Such as, late or soon, dust yields ; 

But the Dark Flower of Death 
Blooms in the fadeless fields. 

132 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

We looked on a cold, still brow, 
But Lincoln could yet survive ; 
He never was more alive, 

Never nearer than now. 

For the pleasant season found him, 
Guarded by faithful hands, 
In the fairest of Summer Lands ; 

With his own brave staff around him, 
There our President stands. 

There they are all at his side, 
The noble hearts and true, 
That did all men might do — 

Then slept, with their swords, and died. 

And around — (for there can cease 
This earthly trouble) — they throng, 

The friends that have passed in peace. 
The foes that have seen their wrong. 

(But, a little from the rest, 
With sad eyes looking down, 
And brows of softened frown, 

With stern arms on the chest, 

Are two, standing abreast — 

Stonewall and Old John Brown.) 

But the stainless and the true. 
These by their President stand, 

To look on his last review, 

Or march with the old command. 

And lo! from a thousand fields, 
From all the old battle-haunts, 

A greater Army than Sherman wields, 
A grander Review than Grant's. 

133 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Gathered home from the grave, 
Risen from sun and rain — 

Rescued from wind and wave 
Out of the stormy main — 

The Legions of our Brave 
Are all in their lines again ! 

Many a stout Corps that went, 
Full-ranked, from camp and tent, 

And brought back a brigade ; 
Many a brave regiment, 

That mustered only a squad. 

The lost battalions, 

That, when the fight went wrong, 
Stood and died at their guns, — 

The stormers steady and strong, 

With their best blood that bought 
Scarp, and ravelin, and wall, — 

The companies that fought 

Till a corporal's guard was all. 

Many a valiant crew, 

That passed in battle and wreck, — 
Ah, so faithful and true ! 

They died on the bloody deck, 
They sank in the soundless blue. 

All the loyal and bold 

That lay on a soldier's bier, — 
The stretchers borne to the rear, 

The hammocks lowered to the hold. 

The shattered wreck we hurried, 
In death-fight, from deck and port,- 

The Blacks that Wagner buried — 
That died in the Bloody Fort ! 

134 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Comrades of camp and mess, 

Left, as they lay, to die, 
In the battle's sorest stress, 

When the storm of fight swept by,— 
They lay in the Wilderness, 

Ah, where did they not lie ? 

In the tangled swamp they lay, 
They lay so still on the sward ! — 

They rolled in the sick-bay, 

Moaning their lives away — 

They flushed in the fevered ward. 

They rotted in Libby yonder, 

They starved in the foul stockade — 

Hearing afar the thunder 
Of the Union cannonade! 

But the old wounds all are healed, 
And the dungeoned limbs are free,- 

The Blue Frocks rise from the field, 
The Blue Jackets out of the sea. 

They've 'scaped from the torture-den, 
They've broken the bloody sod, 

They've all come to life again ! — 

The Third of a Million men 
That died for Thee and God ! 

A tenderer green than May 
The Eternal Season wears, — 

The blue of our summer's day 
Is dim and pallid to theirs, — 

The Horror faded away, 

And 'twas heaven all unawares ! 

135 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Tents on the Infinite Shore ! 

Flags in the azuline sky, 
Sails on the seas once more ! 

To-day, in the heaven on high, 
All under arms once more ! 

The troops are all in their lines, 
The guidons flutter and play ; 

But every bayonet shines, 
For all must march to-day. 

What lofty pennons flaunt? 
What mighty echoes haunt, 

As of great guns, o'er the main? 

Hark to the sound again — 
The Congress is all a-taunt! 

The Cumberland's manned again! 

All the ships and their men 
Are in line of battle to-day, — 

All at quarters, as when 

Their last roll thundered away, — ■ 

All at their guns, as then, 
For the Fleet salutes to-day. 

The armies have broken camp 
On the vast and sunny plain. 
The drums are rolling again ; 

With steady, measured tramp, 
They're marching all again. 

With alignment firm and solemn, 

Once again they form 
In mighty square and column, — 

But never for charge and storm. 

136 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

The Old Flag they died under 
Floats above them on the shore, 

And on the great ships yonder 
The ensigns dip once more — 

And once again the thunder 
Of the thirty guns and four! 

In solid platoons of steel, 

Under heaven's triumphal arch, 

The long lines break and wheel — 

And the word is, "Forward, march!" 

The Colors ripple o'erhead, 
The drums roll up to the sky, 

And with martial time and tread 
The regiments all pass by — 

The ranks of our faithful Dead, 
Meeting their President's eye. 

With a soldier's quiet pride 

They smile o'er the perished pain, 
For their anguish was not vain — 

For thee, O Father, we died ! 
And we did not die in vain. 

March on, your last brave mile ! 

Salute him, Star and Lace, 
Form round him, rank and file. 

And look on the kind, rough face ; 
But the quaint and homely smile 

Has a glory and a grace 
It never had known erewhile — 

Never, in time and space. 



137 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Close round him, hearts of pride ! 
Press near him, side by side, — 

Our Father is not alone ! 
For the Holy Right ye died, 
And Christ, the Crucified, 

Waits to welcome His own. 



FATHER ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Edward William Thomson 

My private shrine. The Gettysburg Address 
Framed in with all authentic photographs 
Of him from whom the Nezv Religion flozvs. 

Homely? That's it. A perfect homeliness. 
Homely as Home itself that countenance 
Benign, immortal szveet, his very soul, 
The steadfast, common, great American. 

It is a gladness in my aging heart 
These eyes three times beheld himself alive, 
Ungainly, jointed loose, rail- fence -like, queer 
In garb that hung zvith scarecrow shapclessncss — 
Absolute figure of The States half-made, 
Turning from toil and joke to sacred war. 



My heart has smiles and tears, remembering how 
The boy, fourteen, round-cheeked and downy-lipped, 
With Philadelphia cheese-cake freshly bit, 
Halted to stare on marbled Chestnut Street ; 
He could not gulp the richness in his maw, 
Because that black-frock-coated countryman 

138 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Of bulged umbrella, rusty stovepipe hat, 
Five yards ahead, and coming rapidly, 
Could be none other than the President, 
From caricatures familiar as the day. 

A sudden twinkle lit his downcast eyes, 
Marking the cheese-cake and the staring boy; 
Tickled to note the checked gastronomy, 
Passing, he asked, "Good, sonny?" in a tone 
Applausive more than questioning, full of fun, 
Yet half-embracive, as your mother's voice, 
And smiled so comrade-like the wondering lad 
Glowed with a sense of being chosen chum 
To Father Abraham Lincoln, President. 

Such was the miracle his spirit wrought 

In millions while he lived. And still it lives. 

He stalked along, unguarded, all alone, 

That central soul of unremitting war, 

A common man level with common Man. 

The heart-warmed, wondering boy stared after him, 

And wonders yet to-day on how it chanced 

The mighty, well-loved, martyr President 

Went rambling on unknown in broadest day 

On crowded street, as if by nimbus hid _ 

From all except the cheese-caked worshiper 

He sonnied, smiled on, joked at fatherly. 



ii 



That night the streets of Philadelphia thronged; 
No end of faces ; one great human cross, 
As far each way as lamp-post boys could see, 
Packed Ninth and Chestnut, waiting Father Abe ; 
The Continental's balcony on high 
Flowed Stars and Stripes, with crape for all the dead 
"We can not dedicate, nor consecrate." 

139 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

On chime of eight precise, gaunt, bare of head, 
They saw his tallness in the balcony-flare, 
And straightway all the murmurous street grew still, 
Till silence absolute as death befell. 

And in that perfect silence one clear voice 
Inspired began, from out the multiude, 
The song of all the songs of all the war, 
Simple, ecstatic, sacrificial, strong — 
"We're coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thou- 
sand more" — 
And neighboring voices took the long refrain 
While some more distant raised the opening words, 
Till to and fro and far and near at once, 
Never in chorus, chanting as by groups, 
Here ending, there beginning, some halfway, 
All sang at once, and all renewing all 
In pledge and passion of the mighty song, 
Their different words and clashing cadences 
Wondrously merging in a sound supreme, 
As if the inmost meaning of the hymn 
Harmonious rolled in one unending vow 
While all the singers gazed on Lincoln's face. 

Hands gripping balcony-rail, he stooped and saw 
And listened motionless, with such a look 
The boy upon the lamp-post clearly knew 
"The heavens were opened unto him," — 
"The spirit of God descending like a dove" — 
Until the mystery of the general soul 
Wrought to unwonted sense of unison 
Moved all to silence for the homely words 
Of Father Abraham Lincoln to his kind — 
Words clear as Light itself, so plain — so plain 
None deemed him other than their fellow man. 



140 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

in 

Once more. A boy in blue at sixteen years, 

Mid groups of blue along the crazy road 

Of corduroy astretch from City Point,. 

Toward yonder spire in fatal Petersburg, 

Beyond what trenches, rifle-pits, and forts, 

What woeful far-front grave-mounds sunken down 

To puddles over pickets shot on post — 

What cemeteries shingle-marked with names 

Of companies and regiments and corps, 

Of moldering bones and rags of blue and gray, 

And belts and buttons, rain and wind exposed — 

Mired army wagons — forms of swollen mules — 

Springfields and Enfields, broken-stocked, stuck up 

Or strown, all rusting — parked artillery — 

Brush shelter stables — lines and lines of huts, 

Tent-covered winter quarters, sticks and mud 

For chimneys to the many thousand smokes 

Whose dropping cinders black-rimmed million holes 

Through veteran canvas ludicrously patched — 

Squares of parade all mud — and mud, and mud, 

With mingled grass and chips and refuse cans 

Strown myriad far about the plain of war, 

Whose scrub-oak roots for scanty fires were grubbed. 

And one sole house, and never fence remained 

Where fifty leagues of corn-land smiled before. 

Belated March — a lowering, rainless day 
With glints of shine ; the veteran tents of Meade 
Gave forth their veteran boys in crowds of blue, 
Infantry, cavalry, gunners, engineers, 
Easterner, Westerner, Yankee, Irish, "Dutch," 
Canuck, all sorts and sizes, f rowsed, unkempt, 
Unwashed, half -smoked, profane exceedingly, 
Moody or jokeful, formidable, free 
From fear of colonels as of corporals, 

141 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Each volunteer the child of his own whim, 
And every man heart-sworn American 
Trudging the mud to view the cavalcade 
Of Father Abraham Lincoln to The Front. 

He, Chief Commander of all Union hosts, 
Of more than thrice three hundred thousand more, 
Rode half a horseneck first, since Grant on right 
And Meade on left kept reining back their bays ; 
Full uniformed were they and all their train, 
Sheridan, Humphreys, Warren, Hazen, Kautz, 
Barlow, McLaughlen, Ord, and thirty more, 
Blazing for once in feathers and in gold. 
Old Abe, all black, bestrode the famous steed, 
Grant's pacing black — and sure since war began 
No host of war had such commander seen! 

Loose-reined he let the steady pacer walk ; 

Those rail-like legs, that forked the saddle, thrust 

Prodigious spattered boots anear the mud, 

Preposterous his parted coat-tails hung, 

In negligence his lounging body stooped, 

Tipping the antic-solemn stovepipe hat ; 

It seemed some old-time circuit preacher turned 

From Grant to Meade and back again to Grant, 

Attentive, questioning, pondering, deep concerned— 

The common Civil Power directing War. 

He, travesty of every point of horsemanship, 
They, so bedizened, riding soldier stern — 
The contrast past all telling comical — 
And Father Abraham wholly unaware ! 

Too much by far for soldier gravity — 
A breeze of laughter traveling as he passed, 
Rose sudden to a gale that stormed his ear. 

142 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

The President turned and gazed and understood 
All in one moment, slightly shook his head, 
Not warningly, but with a cheerful glee, 
And sympathy and love, as if he spoke : 
"You scalawags, you scamps, but have your fun !" 
Pushed up the stovepipe hat, and all around 
Bestowed his warming, right paternal smile, 
As if his soul embraced us all at once. 

Then strangely fell all laughter. Some men choked, 
And some grew inarticulate with tears ; 
A thousand veteran children thrilled as one, 
And not a man of all the throng knew why ; 
Some called his name, some blessed his holy heart, 
And then, inspired with pentecostal tongues, 
We cheered so wildly for Old Father Abe 
That all the bearded generals flamed in joy ! 

What was the miracle? His miracle. 
Was Father Abraham just a son of Man, 
As Jesus seemed to common Nazarenes ? 
Shall Father Abraham Lincoln yet prevail, 
And his Republic come to stay at last ? 
Kind Age, unenvious Youth, democracy, 
None lower than the first in comradeship, 
However differing in mental force, 
The higher intellect set free to Serve, 
All undistracted by the woeful need 
To grab or pander lest its children want ; 
Old trivial gewgaws of the peacock past 
Smiled to the nothingness of desuetude, 
With strut ful Rank, with pinchbeck Pageantry, 
With apish separative-cant of class, 
With inhumane conventions, all designed 
To sanctify the immemorial robbery 
Of Man by men; with mockful mummeries, 

143 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Called Law, to save the one perennial Wrong — 

That fundamental social crime which fates 

All babes alike to Inequality, 

And so condemns the many million minds 

(That might, with happier nurture, finely serve) 

To share, through life, the harmful hates or scorns 

The accursed System breeds, which still most hurts 

The few who fancy it their benefit, 

Shutting them lifelong from the happiness 

Of such close sympathy with all their kind 

As feels the universal God, or Soul, 

Alive to love in every human heart. 

Was it for this our Mothers' sons were slain ? 
Shall Father Abraham not prevail again ? 

We who are marching to the small-flagged graves 
We earned by fight to free our fathers' slaves, 
We who by Lincoln's hero soul were sworn, 
We go more sadly toward our earthly bourne 
To join our comrade host of long ago, 
Since, oh so clearly, do our old hearts know 
We shall not witness what we longed to see — 
Our own dear children minded to be free. 

Why let democracy be flouted down ? 
Why let your money-mongers more renown 
Their golden idol than the Common Weal, 
Flaunting the gains of liberty-to-steal, 
Fouling the promise of the heights we trod 
With Freedom's sacrifice to Lincoln's God? 

Was it for this he wept his children slain ? 
Or shall our Father's spirit rise again ? 



144 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Florence Evelyn Pratt 

Lincoln, the woodsman, in the clearing stood, 

Hemmed by the solemn forest stretching round ; 
Stalwart, ungainly, honest-eyed and rude, 

The genius of that solitude profound. 
He clove the way that future millions trod, 

He passed, unmoved by worldly fear or pelf; 
In all his lusty toil he found not God, 

Though in the wilderness he found himself. 

Lincoln, the President, in bitter strife, 

Best-loved, worst-hated of all living men, 
Oft single-handed, for the nation's life 

Fought on, nor rested ere he fought again. 
With one unerring purpose armed, he clove 

Through selfish sin ; then overwhelmed with care, 
His great heart sank beneath its load of love ; 

Crushed to his knees, he found his God in prayer. 



A LINCOLN CAMPAIGN SONG 

(1858) 

We hear a cry increasing still, 
Like light it springs from hill to hill — 
From Pennsylvania's State it leaps, 
And o'er the Buckeye valley sweeps. 

Get out of the way, Stephen Douglas! 

Get out of the way, Stephen Douglas ! 

Get out of the way, Stephen Douglas ! 

Lincoln is the man we want to serve us ! 

145 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Hoosier State first caught the cry, 
The Hawkeye State then raised it high, 
The Sucker State now waits the day, 
When Lincoln leads to victory ! 

Get out of the way, Stephen Douglas! 

Get out of the way, Stephen Douglas ! 

Get out of the way, Stephen Douglas ! 

Lincoln is the man we want to serve us! 

Cheer up, for victory's on its way, 
No power its onward march can stay, 
As well to stop the thunder's roar 
As hope for Doug to serve us more. 

Get out of the way, wStephen Douglas ! 

Get out of the way, Stephen Douglas ! 

Get out of the way, Stephen Douglas ! 

Lincoln is the man we want to serve us ! 

Then, Freemen, rally, one and all, 
Respond to our brave leader's call ; 
Free Speech, Free Press, Free Soil, want we, 
And Lincoln to lead for liberty ! 

Get out of the way, Stephen Douglas ! 

Get out of the way, Stephen Douglas ! 

Get out of the way, Stephen Douglas ! 

Lincoln is the man we want to serve us ! 



LINCOLN 

John Townsend Trowbridge 

Heroic soul, in homely garb half hid, 
Sincere, sagacious, melancholy, quaint ; 

What he endured, no less than what he did, 

Has reared his monument, and crowned him saint. 

146 



DOUGLAS' COMPLAINT 

(i860) 

He punished me — in fight you see, 
And said I had the wrong of it; 

For I am small and he is tall, 

And that's the short and long of it. 

He split a rail, through my coat-tail 
He quickly thrust the prong of it ; 

I'm five feet one, that lofty son 
Is six feet four and strong of it. 

"WIDE-AWAKE CLUB" SONG 

(Tune: "A Wet Sail and a Flowing Sea") 

Oh, hear you not the wild huzzas 
That come from every State ? 

For honest Uncle Abraham, 
The people's candidate? 

He is our choice, our nominee, 
A self-made man and true ; 

We'll show the Democrats this fall 
What honest Abe can do. 

Then give us Abe, and Hamlin, too, 

To guide our gallant ship, 
With Seward, Sumner, Chase, and Clay, 

And then a merry trip. 

I hear that Doug is half inclined 

To give us all leg-bail, 
Preferring exercise on foot 

To riding on a rail. 

147 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

For Abe has one already mauled 
Upon the White House plan ; 

If once Doug gets astride of that, 
He is a used up man. 

Then give us Abe, and Hamlin, too, 

To guide our gallant ship, 
With Seward, Sumner, Chase, and Clay, 

And then a merry trip. 



HONEST ABE 

Henry Howard Brozvnell 
(Nomination of i860. "A Most Hideous Nickname") 

"Honest Abel" What strange vexation 
Thrills an office-armchaired party! 

What impatience and disgust 

That the people should put trust 
In a name so true and hearty ! 

What indignant lamentation 
For the unchose — surely fitter 
{Growl they) than a rough rail-splitter— 

Most unheard-of nomination! 

If the name you chance to mention, 
Sir {they splutter) the Convention, 

Sir, has acted like a babe ! 
You have missed it, be assured, 
All your best men left to leeward ; 
Give us Banks, or Bates, or Seward — 

But confound this "Honest Abe !" 



148 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

There's a story somewhere told, 
By a fellow grave and old, 

Which, just now, is rather pat. 
I bethink me of his name — 
Plutarch — and of lives the same 

Had as many as a cat. 

In the little state of Athens 

Was a usage, there and then 
Practiced by those classic heathens, 

Rather hard on public men. 
Whatsoe'er the service past, 

If they happened to distrust 'em- 
Thought 'em getting on too fast— 

'Twas, it seems, the pleasant custom 
Just an oyster-shell to shy 
(Sans a wherefore or a why) 

Into a ballot-box huge and high 

With whatever name upon it, 
Chanced the elector's mind to strike, 
(Sulking, like a jealous noddy, 
O'er his Norways and his toddy,) — 
Well, the name of anybody 
That he didn't chance to like. 

And the gentleman who won it 

Such election — (held to tell 

What the free enlightened wished) 
Was, in fact, considered dished, 
And served out on the half-shell ! 

And must needs, at any rate, 
Draw a line in double-quick, 
Mizzle, vamos, cut his stick, 
And absquatulate ! 



149 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Simple and ingenious scheme ! 

Of split tickets there were none — 
(Though the bivalve you might deem 
Suited well for such extreme) — 

Hard or Soft Shell — all were one! 

Once, while thus with general clamor 

Athens eased her factious heart — 
When the smith forsook his hammer, 

And the huckster left his mart — 
Past the scene of noisy riot, 

Clatter of shells and windy talk, 
Aristides, calm and quiet, 

Chanced to take a morning walk. 

Musing, in his wonted fashion, 

On the double care of state — ■ 
On the Demos' fickle passion, 

And the cold patrician hate — 

When a voter pressed beside him, 
Saying, "Stranger, can you spell 

Aristides? Wal, jest write him, 

Square and straight, on this here shell." 

Smiling, cheery as a cricket, 

Wrote the old Republican — 
Then, as he returned the ticket, 

Asked — "And what's his crime, my man ?" 

"Wal, not much," said Snooks, appearing 

Puzzled, "only I'll be cussed 
But I'm sick to death of hearing 

That old critter called The Just!' " 



150 



PARRICIDE 

Julia Ward Howe 
(Abraham Lincoln — April 14th, 1865) 

O'er the warrior gauntlet grim 
Late the silken glove we drew, 
Bade the watch-fires slacken dim 
In the dawn's auspicious hue. 

Stayed the armed heel ; 

Still the clanging steel ; 
Joys unwonted thrilled the silence through. 

Gladly drew the Easter tide ; 
And the thoughts of men anew 
Turned to Him who spotless died 
For the peace that none shall rue. 

Out of mortal pain 

This abiding strain 
Issued : "Peace, my peace I give to you." 

Musing o'er the silent strings, 
By their apathy oppressed, 
Waiting for the spirit-wings 
To be touched and soul-possessed. 

"lam dull," I said: 

"Treason is not dead; 
Still in ambush lurks the shivering guest." 

Then a woman's shriek of fear 
Smote us in its arrowy flight ; 
And a wonder wild and drear 
Did the hearts of men unite. 

Has the seed of crime 

Reached its flowering-time, 
That it shoots to this audacious height ? 

151 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Then, as frosts the landscape change, 
Stiffening from the summer's glow, 
Grew the jocund faces strange, 
Lay the loftiest emblem low: 

Kings are of the past, 

Suffered still to last ; 
These twin crowns the present did bestow. 

Fair assassin, murder white, 
With thy serpent speed avoid 
Each unsullied household light, 
Every conscience unalloyed. 

Neither heart nor home 

Where good angels come 
Suffer thee in nearness to abide. 

Slanderer of the gracious brow, 
The untiring blood of youth, 
Servant of an evil vow, 
Of a crime that beggars ruth, 

Treason was thy dam, 

Wolfling, when the Lamb, 
The Anointed, met thy venomed tooth. 

With the righteous did he fall, 
With the sainted doth he lie ; 
While the gibbet's vultures call 
Thee, that, 'twixt the earth and sky, 

Disavowed of both 

In their Godward troth, 
Thou mayst make thy poor amend, and die. 



152 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

If it were my latest breath, 
Doomed his bloody end to share, 
I would brand thee with his death 
As a deed beyond despair. 

Since the Christ was lost 

For a felon's cost, 
None like thee of vengeance should beware. 

Leave the murderer, noble song, 
Helpless in the toils of fate : 
To the just thy meeds belong, 
To the martyr, to the state, 

When the storms beat loud 

Over sail and shroud, 
Tunefully the seaman cheers his mate. 

Never tempest lashed the wave 
But to leave it fresher calm ; 
Never weapon scarred the brave 
But their blood did purchase balm. 

God hath writ on high 

Such a victory 
As uplifts the nation with its psalm. 

Honor to the heart of love, 
Honor to the peaceful will, 
Slow to threaten, strong to move, 
Swift to render good for ill ! 

Glory crowns his end, 

And the captive's friend 
From his ashes makes us freemen still. 



153 



PARDON 

Julia Ward Howe 
(Wilkes Booth— April 26th, 1865) 

Pains the sharp sentence the heart in whose wrath it 
was uttered, 

Now thou art cold ; 
Vengeance, the headlong, and Justice, with purpose 
close muttered, 

Loosen their hold. 

Death brings atonement; he did that whereof ye ac- 
cuse him, — 

Murder accurst ; 
But from that crisis of crime in which Satan did lose 
him, 

Suffered the worst. 

Harshly the red dawn arose on a deed of his doing, 

Never to mend ; 
But harsher days he wore out in the bitter pursuing 

And the wild end. 

So lift the pale flag of truce, wrap those mysteries 
round him, 

In whose avail 
Madness that moved, and the swift retribution that 
found him, 

Falter and fail. 

So the soft purples that quiet the heavens with mourn- 
ing 

Willing to fall, 
Lend him one fold, his illustrious victim adorning 

With wider pall. 

154 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Back to the cross, where the Savior uplifted in dying 

Bade all souls live, 
Turns the reft bosom of Nature, his mother, low sigh- 
ing. 

Greatest, forgive! 



LINCOLN 

Richard Linthicum 

(On the Fiftieth Anniversary of His Nomination for President 
of the United States, May 18th, i860 — 1910) 

The Beginning 

What strong, sure hand shall guide the laboring ship 
Through seas that gather rage beneath black skies 
And bring a new world's freighted hopes to port? 
Give us a captain bold and tried and true, 
Not this gaunt, shambling, homespun lout — 
Railsplitter, backwoods jester, wrestling clown. 

The End 

A sturdy oak knit to the virgin soil, 
Its sheltering boughs in benediction spread 
And nerve-responsive to each gentle breeze, 
Storm-racked and bent, the forest's pride and chief, 
Outlives the tempest and the lightning's wrath 
To die in its full prime, stung by a worm. 

The Retrospect 

As in a mountain range one giant peak 
Lifts its tall head above its fellow-crests, 
A guide to all within the lofty land, 
A world-enriching treasure in its depths, 
So Lincoln stood among his fellow-men, 
With rugged, seamy front and heart of gold. 

155 



LINCOLN 

Lydia London Elliott 

The deeds of him who bore that name 
On Ethiopia's soul are marked in flame ! 
Caressed at birth by Toil's hard hands, 
He lingered not, till Life's uplands 
Rose clear, distinct before his gaze — 
A golden mist from purplish haze. 
Honesty, faith, pure love, exemplified ; 
Great Nature wept when Lincoln died ! 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Walter M alone 

A blend of mirth and sadness, smiles and tears ; 
A quaint knight-errant of the pioneers ; 
A homely hero born of star and sod ; 
A Peasant Prince; a Masterpiece of God. 

LINCOLN— THE BOY 

James Whitcomb Riley 

O simple as the rhymes that tell 

The simplest tales of youth, 
Or simple as a miracle 

Beside the simplest truth — 
So simple seems the view we share 

With our Immortals, sheer 
From Glory looking down to where 

They were as children here. 

156 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Or thus we know, nor doubt it not, 

The boy he must have been 
Whose budding heart bloomed with the thought 

All men are kith and kin — 
With love-light in his eyes and shade 

Of prescient tears : — Because 
Only of such a boy were made 

The loving man he was. 



THE STROKE OF JUSTICE 

Lyman Whitney Allen 

The hour was come, the Nation's crucial hour ; 
A crisis of the world, a turn of time ; 
The ages' hope and dream. 
And one undaunted soul, sinewed with power, 
Freedom's anointed, rose to height sublime, 
Imperial and supreme ; 

And, lifting high o'er groaning multitude 

His sovereign scepter, smote with such a stroke 
The chains of centuries, 
That earth was shaken to its farthest rood ; 
That million manacles asunder broke, 
And myriad properties 

Became, in one immortal moment, — men ; 
Free with the free in all the rounded earth ; 
Redeemed by martyr blood ; 
To stand with faces to the light again, 

Attaining, through their resurrection birth, 
To human brotherhood. 



157 



LINCOLN 

Thomas MacKellar 

So deep our grief, it may be silence is 

The meetest tribute to the father's name : 
A secret shrine in every heart is his 

Whom death hath girt with an immortal fame ; 
And in this dim recess our thoughts abide, 

Clad in the garment of unspoken grief, 
As fain the sorrow of the heart to hide 

That yields no tears to give our woe relief. 
But death is not to such as he, we cry : 

His tongue is mute ; his heart may pulse no more 
Yet men so good and loved do never die ; 

But while the tide shall flow upon the shore 
Of time to come, a presence to the eye 

Of nations shall he be, and evermore 
Shall freemen treasure in historic page 
This martyr-hero of earth's noblest age. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Rose Terry Cooke 
("Strangnlatus Pro Republic^') 

Hundreds there have been, loftier than their kind, 
Heroes and victors in the world's great wars : 
Hundreds, exalted as the eternal stars, 

By the great heart, or keen and mighty mind ; 

There have been sufferers, maimed and halt and blind, 
Who bore their woes in such triumphant calm 
That God hath crowned them with the martyr's 
palm ; 

And there were those who fought through fire to find 

158 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Their Master's face, and were by fire refined. 

But who like thee, oh Sire ! hath ever stood 
Steadfast for truth and right, when lies and wrong 
Rolled their dark waters, turbulent and strong; 

Who bore reviling, baseness, tears and blood 
Poured out like water, till thine own was spent, 
Then reaped Earth's sole reward — a grave and monu- 
ment ! 



LINCOLN: A RETROSPECT 

Harry H. Kemp 

Now that the winds of Peace have blown away 
The battle smoke which long obscured the day, 
Now that all wrath is as a tale of old 
And human flesh is minted into gold 
No longer, and the straggling thunders cease 
And all the land is wrapt in busy peace — 
There towers in our sight this man of worth 
Above the selfish kings that ruled the earth. 
He did not yearn for hopeless things, nor sigh 
For purple kingdoms verging on the sky, 
Nor long for irised landscapes shimmering fair 
In a blown bubble of inconstant air, 
But with great vision of the years to be 
He shaped a mighty nation's destiny 
And gave all man can give — his life he gave — 
To weld the broken state and free the slave. 

Gave resolution to the ruler's pen ; 

The books he conned beside the open fire 

Made strong the brain which battles could not tire ; 

The law courts with forensic shift and strife 

The ax the gaunt youth swung in dale and glen 

Prepared him for that tragedy, his life. 

159 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

He never held his ways from men apart, 

Yet kept a sanctuary in his heart 

Whence flowed a stream of love and hope, to bless, 

Pure as a clear spring in a wilderness. 

He trusted God — bearing the weight of war — 

As olden captains trusted in a star. 

And yet he was not all the stolid oak : 

Full well could he the foeman's smile provoke 

With homely proverb or a timely joke. 

Calm and serene unto the end he passed 
And bravely met his martyrdom at last. . . . 
They crossed his thin, worn hands upon his breast. 
God gave the country peace and Lincoln rest ! 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

John Vance Cheney 

His people called, and forth he came 
As one that answers to his name ; 
Nor dreamed how high his charge, 
His privilege how large, — 

To set the stones back in the wall 
Lest the divided house should fall. 
The shepherd who would keep 
The flocks, would fold the sheep, 

Humbly he came, yet with the mien 
Presaging the immortal scene, — 
Some battle of His wars 
Who sealeth up the stars. 

1 60 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

No flaunting of the banners bold 
Borne by the haughty sonsof old ; 
Their blare, their pageantries, 
Their goal,— they were not his. 

We called, he came ; he came to crook 
The spear into the pruning-hook, 
To toil, untimely sleep, 
And leave a world to weep. 

LINCOLN 

James G. Clark 

With life unsullied from his youth, 

He meekly took the ruler's rod, 
And, wielding it in love and truth, 

He lived, the noblest work of God. 
He knew no fierce, unbalanced zeal, 

That spurns all human differings, 
Nor craven fear that shuns the steel 

That carves the way to better things. 

And in the night of blood and grief, 

When horror rested on the ark, 
His was the calm, undimmed belief 

That felt God's presence in the dark ; 
Full well he knew each wandering star, 

That once had decked the azure dome 
Would tremble through the clouds of War, 

And, like a prodigal, come home. 

He perished ere the angel Peace 

Had rolled war's curtains from the sky, 

But he shall live when wars shall cease— 
The great and good can never die ; 
161 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

For though his heart lies cold and still 
We feel its beatings warm and grand, 

And still his spirit pulses thrill 

Through all the councils of the land. 

Oh, for the hosts that sleep to-day, 

Lulled by the sound of Southern waves; 
The sun that lit them in the fray 

Now warms the flowers upon their graves- 
Sweet flowers that speak like words of love 

Between the forms of friend and foe, 
Perchance their spirits meet above, 

Who crossed their battle-blades below. 

'Twas not in vain the deluge came, 

And systems crumbled in the gloom, 
And not in vain have sword and flame 

Robbed home and heart of life and bloom ; 
The mourner's cross, the martyr's blood, 

Shall crown the world with holier rights, 
And slavery's storm and slavery's flood 

Leave Freedom's ark on loftier heights. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Richard Henry Stoddard 

This man whose homely face you look upon 
Was one of Nature's masterful, great men ; 
Born with strong arms, that unfought battles won, 
Direct of speech and cunning with the pen. 
Chosen for large designs, he had the art 
Of winning with his humor, and he went 
Straight to his mark, which was the human heart ; 
Wise, too, for what he could not break he bent. 
162 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Upon his back a more than Atlas-load, 
The burden of the Commonwealth, was laid ; 
He stooped, and rose up to it, though the road 
Shot suddenly downward, not a whit dismayed : 
Patiently resolute, what the stern hour 
Demanded, that he was, — that Man, that Power. 



THE NIGHT RIDE OF ANCIENT ABE 

Miles O'Reilly 
(Charles Graham Halpine) 

Not a drum was heard, not a party cry — 

We were all most terribly flurried, 
As, with kindling horror in heart and eye, 

Old Abe to the rail-cars we hurried. 

We hurried him quickly, at dead of night, 
A disguise o'er his long limbs throwing, 

By the struggling moonbeam's misty light, 
And a bull's-eye dimly glowing. 

No useless pageant or pomp we had, 

But with Sumner's cloak around him, 
And canny Sim Cameron's cap of plaid 

To put through in the dark we bound him. 

Few and short were the words he said, 

As we looked in his face of sorrow, 
But sadly we thought of the row to be made 

In the Herald and Times of the morrow. 

163 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

We thought, as we jostled him into the car 

Without either cheer or ovation, 
What a laugh there would be when the news spread 
afar 

Of the Rail-splitter's ass-ass-ination. 

We started the train, and the hero was off, 

Evading each Plug-Ugly sentry ; 
But, Lord ! how the heathen will guffaw and scoff 

At this new kind of "national entry." 

Gayly the Post of the plot may make light, 
And talk of the "Tooley street tailors," 

But, snugly installed in the mansion of white, 
The Rail-splitter laughs at all railers. 



THE ANCIENT ABE 

Miles O'Reilly 

(Charles Graham Halpine) 

{Air: "The Shan Van Vocht") 

"Let us up and do or die," 

Says the Ancient Abe; 
"Let us up and do or die," 

Says old Abe ; 
"We will rear our banner high 
As the stars are in the sky, 
And our enemies shall fly," 
Says the ancient Abe. 

Then to Washington he flew, 
Did the ancient Abe — 

Then to Washington he flew, 
Did old Abe ; 

164 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

And he swore by black and blue 
All seceders to "put through," 
And the forts to man anew, 
Did the ancient Abe. 

Has he kept his solemn vow, 

Has the ancient Abe? 
Has he kept his solemn vow, 

Has old Abe? 
By the Lord ! we see him bow 
At the shadow of a row — 
'Tis an ugly case of "cow" 

With the ancient Abe. 

For without a cannon fired 

By the ancient Abe — 
Not a gun or cracker fired 

By old Abe — 
He has peacefully retired, 
Granting all the South desired, 
Sinking down as it aspired, 

Has the ancient Abe. 

"Major Anderson's to blame," 

Cries the ancient Abe; 
"It is he that is to blame," 

Says old Abe ; 
And thus to hide the shame 
Of a heart that is not "game," 
He befouls that honored name, 

Does the ancient Abe. 

Oh, my friends, we've had enough 

Of this ancient Abe — 
Much more than was enough 

Of old Abe; 

165 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

He is made of such weak stuff, 
The South beats his game of bluff, 
And I fear they'll ride him rough — 
Ride the ancient Abe. 

Let us watch and wait and pray 

For the ancient Abe — 
For our country let us pray, 

And for Abe ; 
Let us help him if we may, 
When he falters on the way, 
Guide him back when gone astray. — 

Poor bewildered Abe. 

For though all the saddest fates 

Link with ancient Abe — 
All the most despairing fates 

Link with Abe — 
He is captain in the gates 
Of these grand United States, 
And must be till time abates — 

Hapless ancient Abe. 

Let us therefore, though we squirm 

Under ancient Abe — 
Though we writhe and groan and squirm 

Under Abe — 
Let us all stand true and firm, 
Of his courage nurse the germ, 
And in patience bear the term 

Of the ancient Abe. 



166 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN— 1863 

Richard Realf 



It touches to the quick the spirit of one 

Who knows what Freedom is ; whose eyes have seen 
The crops thou sowest ripen in the sun ; 

Whose feet have trod the fields wherein men glean 
The harvests of thy lonely hours, when thou 

Didst grapple with the Incarnate Insolence 

Lording the Land with impious pretense, 
And very bravely on its arrogant brow 

Didst set thy sealed abhorrence — when he hears 
The glib invectives which men launch at thee, 

Beloved of Peoples, crowned in all thy years 
Nestor of all our chiefs of Liberty, 

As if thou wert some devil of crafty spell 

Let loose to lure the unwary unto hell. 



11 



But thou art wiser; thy clear spiritual sense 

Threading our tangled darkness, seest how 
The equilibriums of Omnipotence 

Poise the big worlds in safety. Disavow 
And jeer thee as men will, stab, howl, and curse, 

Nor pluck the noble memories of thy name 
From the glad keeping of the Universe 

Quickened with the conjunction of thy spirit, 
For lo ! thou art Ours alone — and yet thou art 

Nature's, Mankind's, the Age's! We inherit 
Joint treasures from thee ; but we stand apart 

From all the earth in bitter trespasses 

'Gainst thee and thy great throb of tenderness. 

167 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 
in 

Nathless, let not our cold ingratitude 

Make sad the soul within thee : in the years 

When the full meanings of our brotherhood 
Roll their high revelations round the spheres, 

The solemn passion of thy life shall be 
A wonder and a worship unto all, 
Whose eyes behold the Apocalyptical 

Transfiguration of Humanity. 

Meanwhile, because thy recompense is pain, 

Weary not thou ; invisible lips shall kiss 

The trouble from thy heart and from thy brain, 

In all the days of thy self-sacrifice, 

Thy blessed hurts being still thy amplest wage, 
Thou Archimedes of Love's leverage. 



LINCOLN— 1865 

Lewis V. F. Randolph 

What hast thou hidden, mournful Night ! 

What have ye seen, O Stars ! 
A country turning to the Light, 

Covered with sacred scars, 
Plunged back in dark and dire distress 

By one foul, fiendish deed 
That leaves a people comfortless — 

Makes every true heart bleed. 

It was no common crime that struck 
That God-like man to earth — 

Ruthless, the tender eye to pluck 
That watched our land's new birth. 
168 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

No word — nor Treason, Fratricide, 

Nor Parricide — can tell 
His act, whose hand was so allied 

With powers of deepest hell. 

This was our brother, father — more;- 

Chosen by mother-land, 
His name her valiant sons adore 

In every patriot band. 
God of our brethren and our sires ! 

Be Thou our Father now ; 
Whilst at our altars and our fires 

In prayerful grief we bow ! 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Frank Moore 
(January ist, 1863) 

Stand like an anvil, when 'tis beaten 

With the full vigor of the smith's right arm ! 
Stand like the noble oak-tree, when 'tis eaten 

By Saperda and his ravenous swarm ! 
For many smiths will strike the ringing blows 
Ere the red drama now enacting close ; 
And human insects, gnawing at thy fame, 
Conspire to bring thy honored head to shame. 

Stand like the firmament, upholden 

By an invisible but Almighty hand ! 
He whomsoever Justice doth embolden, 

Unshaken, unseduced, unawed shall stand. 
Invisible support is mightier far, 
With noble aims than walls of granite are ; 
And simple consciousness of justice gives 
Strength to a purpose while that purpose lives. 
169 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Stand like the rock that looks defiant 

Far o'er the surging seas that lash its form ! 
Composed, determined, watchful, self-reliant, 

Be master of thyself, and rule the storm! 
And thou shalt soon behold the bow of peace 
Span the broad heavens, and the wild tumult cease ; 
And see the billows, with the clouds that meet, 
Subdued and calm, come crouching to thy feet. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S CHRISTMAS 
GIFT 

Nora Perry 

'Twas in eighteen hundred and sixty-four, 
That terrible year when the shock and roar 
Of the nation's battles shook the land, 
And the fire leapt up into fury fanned, 

The passionate, patriotic fire, 

With its throbbing pulse and its wild desire 

To conquer and win, or conquer and die, 

In the thick of the fight when hearts beat high 

With the hero's thrill to do and to dare, 
'Twixt the bullet's rush and the muttered prayer. 
In the North, and the East and the great Northwest, 
Men waited and watched with eager zest 

For news of the desperate, terrible strife, — 
For a nation's death or a nation's life; 
While over the wires there flying sped 
News of the wounded, the dying and dead. 

170 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

"Defeat and defeat! Ah ! what was the fault 
Of the grand old army's sturdy assault 
At Richmond's gates?" in querulous key 
Men questioned at last impatiently, 

As the hours crept by, and day by day 
They watched the Potomac Army at bay. 
Defeat and defeat ! It was here, just here, 
In the very height of the fret and fear, 

Click, click ! across the electric wire 

Came suddenly flashing words of fire, 

And a great shout broke from city and town 

At the news of Sherman's marching down, — 

Marching down on his way to the sea 
Through the Georgia swamps to victory. 
Faster and faster the great news came, 
Flashing along like tongues of flame, — 

McAllister ours ! And then, ah ! then, 
To that patientest, tenderest, noblest of men, 
This message from Sherman came flying swift,- 
"I send you Savannah for a Christmas gift!" 



HUSHED BE THE CAMPS TO-DAY 

Walt Whitman 
(May 4th, 1865) 

Hushed be the camps to-day, 
And soldiers, let us drape our war-worn weapons, 
And each with musing soul retire to celebrate 
Our dear commander's death. 

171 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

No more for him life's stormy conflicts, 

Nor victory, nor defeat — no more time's dark events, 

Charging like ceaseless clouds across the sky. 

But sing, poet, in our name. 

Sing of the love we bore him — because you, dweller in 
camps, know it truly. 

As they invault the coffin there, 

Sing — as they close the doors of earth upon him — one 

verse 
For the heavy hearts of soldiers. 



CROWN HIS BLOOD-STAINED 
PILLOW 

Julia Ward Howe 

Crown his blood-stained pillow 

With a victor's palm ; 
Life's receding billow 

Leaves eternal calm. 

At the feet Almighty 

Lay this gift sincere; 
Of a purpose weighty, 

And a record clear. 

With deliverance freighted 

Was this passive hand, 
And this heart, high-fated, 

Would with love command. 

Let him rest serenely 

In a Nation's care, 
Where her waters queenly 

Make the West more fair. 
172 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

In the greenest meadow 
That the prairies show, 

Let his marble shadow 
Give all men to know : 

"Our First Hero, living, 
Made his country free ; 

Heed the Second's giving, 
Death for Liberty." 



THE PRESIDENT'S PROCLAMATION 

Hoivard Glyndon 
(Laura C. Redden Searing) 

Authorising the Mustering Into Service of Colored Regiments 

Lift up the bowed, desponding head, 

O long-enduring race ! 
Let the meek sufferance of your eyes 

Abash the tyrant's face. 

Take courage, O despairing race ! 

The tides of fortune turn, 
When white men take in kindly clasp 

The hands they used to spurn ! 

Go into battle side by side 

With men of fairer hue; 
We will not hinder by our scorn 

The work you have to do ! 

Despised, rejected, cast away, 

Ye are God's children yet ! 
And on the foreheads of your race 

His mercy-seal is set ! 

173 



LINCOLN CENTENARY ODE 

Percy Mackaye 

i 
No ceremonial 

Of pealed chime was there, or blared horn, 
Such as hath blazoned births of lesser kings, 
When he — the elder brother of us all, 
Lincoln — was born. 
At his nativity 

Want stood as sponsor, stark Obscurity- 
Was midwife, and all lonely things 
Of nature were unconscious ministers 
To endow his spirit meek 
With their own melancholy. So when he — 
An infant king of commoners — 
Lay in his mother's arms, of all the earth 
(Which now his fame wears for a diadem) 
None heeded of his birth ; 
Only a star burned over Bethlehem 
More bright, and, big with prophecy, 
A secret gust from that far February 
Fills now the organ-reeds that peal his centenary. 



ii 



Who shall distil in song those epic years? 
Only the Sibyl of simplicity, 
Touched by the light and dew of common tears, 
Might chant that homely native Odyssea. 

For there are lives too large in simple truth 
For art to limn or elegy to gauge, 
And there are men so near to God's own ruth 
They are the better angels of their age, 

174 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

And such was he : beyond the pale of song 
His grandeur looms in truth, with awful grace ; 
He lives where beauty's origins belong 
Deep in the primal raptures of his race. 

Yet may we strive to trace 

His shadow — where it pulses vast 

Upon imagination, cast 

By the oft-handtrimm'd lamp of history — 

In carved breath, or bronze, that we might scan 

The imagined child and man 

Whose life and death are looms of our own destiny. 



in 



How like a saga of the northern sea 
Our own Kentucky hero-tale begins ! 

Once on a time, far in a wintry wood, 

A lone hut stood ; 

There lived a poor man's son that was to be 

A master man of earth. 
And so for us, 

Like children in the great hall of his spirit, 
The homebred fairy-story spins 
Annals whose grace the after-times inherit. 

The uncouth homestead by the trail of Boone, 
The untitled grant, the needy exodus, 
The ox-cart on the Indiana heath, 
The log shack by the Sangamon, and soon 
The fever'd mother and the forest death — 
From these the lonely epic wanders on. 

The longshank boy, with visage creased by toil 
And laughter of the soil, 

175 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Cribbing his book of statutes from his chore, 

Erelong his nooning fellows of the field 

Hail their scrub-orator, or at sundown — 

Slouching his gaunt and sallow six-foot-four — 

Their native Touchstone of the village store. 

Or from the turf, where he has matched his build 

To throw the county champion in the loam, 

Idly he saunters home 

To rock some mother's cradle in the town ; 

Or, stretched on counter calico, with Clay 

And organ-sounding Webster, dream the night away. 

But time begins 

Slowly to sift the substance from the slag. 

And now along the county pike's last lap, 

With giant shins 

Shut knifewise in his wabbling rattletrap, 

The circuit lawyer trots his tired nag 

Toward the noon tavern, reins up, and unrolls 

His awkward length of wrinkled bombazine, 

Clutching his tattered green 

Umbrella and thin carpetsack, 

And flings a joke that makes the rafters roar : 

As if, uplooming from of yore, 

Some quaint-accoutered king of trolls, 

Out-elbowing a sexton's suit of black 

In Christmas glee, 

Should sudden crack 

His shrilly jest of shrewd hilarity, 

And shake the clambering urchins from his back. 

IV 

How vast the war invisible 
When public weal battles with public will ! 
Proudly the stars of Union hung their wreath 
On the young nation's lordly architrave; 

176 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Yet underneath 

Its girding vaults and groins, 

Half the fair fabric rested on the loins 

And stooping sinews of a slave, 

That — raised to the just stature of a man — 

Should rend the whole asunder. 

And now the million-headed serf began 

To stir in wonder, 

And from the land, appalled by that low thunder, 

"Kansas-Nebraska !" rang 

The cry, and with exceeding pang 

Out of the earth blood sprang 

And out of men's hearts, fire. And that hot flame, 

Fed by the book that burned in all men's homes, 

Kindled from horizon to horizon 

Anguish and shame 

And aspiration, by its glow 

Ruddying the state-house domes 

With monstrous shadows of Dred Scott 

And gaunt -limbed effigies of Garrison. 

Then in the destined man matured the slow 

Strong grandeur of that lot 

Which singled him ; till soon, 

Ushered with lordly train, 

The champion Douglas met him on the plain, 

And the broad prairie moon 

Peered through white schooners at the mad bonfires 

And multitudes astir, 

Where — roped like wrestlers in a ring — 

The Little Giant faced the Rails flitter; 

And serious crowds harked silently, 

With smothered taunts and ires, 

While Commonsense grappled with "Sovereignty," 

Till the lank, long-armed wrestler made his fling. 

And still sublime 

177 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

With common sympathy, that cool 

Sane manfulness survives : You can not fool 

All of the people all the time. 

No; by that power we misname fate, 

'Tis character which molds the state. 

Statutes are dead when men's ideals dissent, 

And public will is more than precedent, 

And manhood more than constitutions can create. 

Higher than bar and documental ban, 

Men's highest court is still the heart of Man. 



Bold to his country, sick with compromise, 

Spoke the plain advocate ; 

Half slave, half free, our Union dies, 

But it shall live! And done with sophistries, 

The people answered with tempestuous call 

That shook the revolutionary dead, 

And high on rude rails garlanded 

Bore their backwoodsman to the Capitol. 

"Who is this common huckster?" sneered the great, 

"This upstart Solon of the Sangamon?" 

And chastened Douglas answered : "He is one 

Who wrestles well for Truth." But some 

Scowled unbelief, and some smiled bitterly; 

And so, beneath the derrick'd half-built dome, 

While dumb artillery 

And guards battalioned the black lonely form, 

He took his oath. 

We are not enemies, but friends! 

Yet scarce the sad rogation ends 

Ere the warped planks of Union split in storm 

Of dark secession. 



178 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Then, as on a raft 
Flood-rended, where by night the Ohio sweeps 
Into the Mississippi, 'mid the roil 
Of roaring waters with eroded soil 
From hills primeval, the strong poleman keeps 
Silence, midway the shallows and the rocks, 
To steer his shipment safe, while fore and aft 
The scrambling logmen scream at him, or scold 
With prayers and malisons, or burst the locks 
And loot the precious bales, so — deaf and mute 
To sneers and imprecations both — 
The lone Flatboatman of the Union poled 
His country's wreck midstream, and resolute 
Held still his goal : 

To lash his ballast to the sundered half, 
And save the whole. 

"They seek a sign, 

But no sign shall be given them," he said; 

And reaching Godward, with his pilot's gaff 

Probed in the dark, among the drowning and the dead, 

And sunk his plummet line 

Deep in the people's heart, where still his own heart 

bled, 
And fathomed there the inundated shore 
Swept by the flood and storm of elemental war. 



IX 



The loving and the wise 
May seek — but seek in vain — to analyze 
The individual man, for having caught 
The mystic clue of thought, 

179 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Sudden they meet the controverting whim, 

And fumbling with the enchanted key, 

Lose it then utterly. 

.^Esop and old Isaiah held in him 

Strange sessions, winked at by Artemus Ward, 

Till sudden in their midst bright Seraphim 

Stood, summoned by a sad, primeval bard 

Who, bearing still no name, has ever borne 

Within his heart the music of mankind: 

Sometime a lonely singer blind 

Beside the Ionian sea; 

Sometime, between two thieves in scorn, 

A face in Calvary. 

That was his master soul — 

The mystic demi-god of common man — 

Who, templed in the steadfast mind, 

Hid his shy gold of genius in the bran 

Of Hoosier speech and garb, softening the wan 

Strong face of shrewdness with strange aureole. 

He was the madstone to his country's ire, 
Drawing the rancorous blood of envious quarrel 
Alike from foe and friend ; his pity, stirr'd, 
Restored to its bough the storm-unnested bird, 
Or raised the wallow'd pig from out the mire. 
And he who sowed in sweat his boyhood's crop, 
And tackled Euclid with a wooden spade, 
And excavated Blackstone from a barrel 
To hold moot trials in the gloaming, made 
By lighted shavings in a cooper's shop, 
He is the people's still — their Railsplitter, 
Himself a rail, clean-grained, of character 
Self-hewn in the dark glades of Circumstance 



1 80 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

From that deep-hearted tree 

Democracy, 

Which, by our race's heritage, 

Reforests age on age, 

Perpetual in strong fecundity. 

XI 

But he is more than ours, as we are more 

Than yet the world dares dream. His stature grows 

With that illimitable state 

Whose sovereignty ordains no tribute shore 

And borderland of hate, 

But grounds its justice in the joy it sows. 

His spirit is still a power to emancipate 

Bondage — more base, being more insidious, 

Than serfdom — that cries out in the midst of us 

For virtue, born of opportunity, 

And manhood, weighed in honest human worth, 

And freedom, based in labor. He stands forth 

'Mongst nations old — a new-world Abraham, 

The patriarch of peoples still to be, 

Blending all visions of the promised land 

In one Apocalypse. 

His voice is heard — 
Thrilling the molder'd lintels of the past — 
In Asia ; old Thibet is stirred 
With warm imaginings; 
Ancestral China, 'midst her mysteries, 
Unmasks, and flings 
Her veils wide to the Occident ; the wand 
Of hope awakes prone Hierapolis ; 
Even by the straits of old that Io swam, 
The immemorial sultan, scepterless, 
Stands awed ; and heartened by that bold success, 
Pale Russia rises from her holocaust. 

181 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

And still the emancipating influence, 
The secret power, the increasing truth, are his, 
For they are ours : ours by the potencies 
Poured in our nation from the founts of time, 
Blending in us the mystic seeds of men, 
To sow them forth again 
For harvests more sublime 
Throughout the world. 

XII 

Leave, then, that wonted grief 

Which honorably mourns its martyred dead, 

And newly hail instead 

The birth of him, our hardy shepherd chief, 

Who by green paths of old democracy 

Leads still his tribes to uplands of glad peace. 

As long as — out of blood and passion blind — 

Springs the pure justice of the reasoning mind, 

And justice, bending, scorns not to obey 

Pity, that once in a poor manger lay, 

As long as, thrall'd by time's imperious will, 

Brother hath bitter need of brother, still 

His presence shall not cease 

To lift the ages toward his human excellence, 

And races yet to be 

Shall in a rude hut do him reverence 

And solemnize a simple man's nativity. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Joel Benton 

Some opulent force of genius, soul, and race, 
Some deep life-current from far centuries 
Flowed to his mind, and lighted his sad eyes, 

And gave his name, among great names, high place. 

182 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

But these are miracles we may not trace — 
Nor say why from a source and lineage mean 
He rose to grandeur never dreamt or seen, 

Or told on the long scroll of history's space. 

The tragic fate of one broad hemisphere 
Fell on stern days to his supreme control, 

All that the world and liberty held dear 

Pressed like a nightmare on his patient soul. 

Martyr beloved, on whom, when life was done, 

Fame looked, and saw another Washington! 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Samuel Francis Smith 

Heroic statesman, hail ! 

Thy honored name, 
With instrument and song, we laud, 

And poet's lays; 
How every mountain top, and sheltered rail, 

And rock and stream, 
And lisping tongue of infancy and age, 

And manhood's prime and woman's love, 

Combine thy honored name to praise. 

As to Anchises' tomb, 
With reverent love, pious iEneas came, 

Intent, with festal rites 

To crown his father's fame, — 
So we, with grateful reverence, come to pay 
This loving tribute at the sacred shrine, 

The statesman wise, the martyr prince, 
The peerless man, 
And on his tomb our fragrant garlands lay. 

183 ' 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Like the wild eagle's flight, 

When from his rocky height, 
Down on the plain he swoops, free as the air, 

Born with a soul of fire, 
Born to be free, 
Patient in toil, and danger, and alarm, 

He ventured all for love of liberty, 

And helped the lowly in that bliss to share. 

Grandly he loved and lived ; 

Not his own age alone 
Bears the proud impress of his sovereign mind. 

Down the long march of history, 

Ages and men shall see 

What one great soul can be, 

What one great soul can do, 

To make a nation true, — 
To raise the weak, 
The lost to seek, 
To be a ruler and a father too ; 
No scheming tool, 

No slave to godless rule, 
Gracious, efficient, meek, sublime, refined. 

Ambitious, — not of wealth, 
Nor power, nor place ; 
His aim, a nobler race ; 
His title eminent, — An honest man. 
His, to lift up the rude; 
His, to be great as good, 

And good as great ; 
His, to stem error's flood ; 
His, but to help and bless ; 
His to work righteousness, 

And save the state. 



184 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Brave, self-reliant, wise, 

Calm in emergencies, 
Steady, alike, to wait, and prompt to move ; 

In counsel, great and safe ; 
Prudent to plan ; 

Righteous to deal with sin ; 

Prone, less to force than win ; 
Strong in his own stern will, and strong in God ; 

Conquering, alone, to bless, — 
A loving man. 

Firm, but yet merciful ; 

In pity bountiful; 
Calmly considerate, serenely just; 
Nobly forgiving to the fallen foe, — 
He, the meek sufferer from Oppression's blow, 

Repaying ill with good, 

E'en as the sandal-wood 
Bathes with rare perfume the sharp axe that smites 

Unflinching for the right, 
Whate'er might come, 

And, until death, 
Fervent, decided, faithful to his trust. 

Great souls can never die : 

Death and decay's damp fingers 

Waste but the mortal ; 
A noble life spreads its fair vista wide. 
Beyond death's portal, 

Like an unfading light 

The life work lingers. 
The hero dies ; statesman and soldier fall ; 

The nation finds new life, 
And prosperous years, and wealth, and peace, 

And hearts at rest, and grander aims, 

And righteousness, 

185 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

And souls that dare to be, 

Just as God made them, — free ; 
And he who falls, crushed in the bitter strife, 
Lives magnified, exalted, ever lives ; 

His work bears fruit immortal. 

So the great sun, majestic, plows his way 
Through clouds, and storms, and dim eclipse, 

And winter's cold and summer's heat ; 

And, nightly, dips 
His flaming disc in the broad western sea, 
But scatters light and blessing all the day. 

Setting, he leaves the world 
Richer and better for his light and love ; 

Warmer, more fertile, more benign ; 
Sets, but to rise, on other lands, and shine 

For ever, in the galaxy divine. 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Edmund Clarence Stedman 
(Assassinated Good Friday, 1865) 

"Forgive them, for they know not what they do !" 

He said, and so went shriven to his fate, — 
Unknowing went, that generous heart and true. 

Even while he spoke the slayer lay in wait, 

And when the morning opened Heaven's gate 
There passed the whitest soul a nation knew. 

Henceforth all thoughts of pardon are too late; 
They, in whose cause that arm its weapon drew, 

Have murdered Mercy. Now alone shall stand 
Blind Justice, with the sword unsheathed she wore. 

Hark, from the Eastern to the Western strand, 
The swelling thunder of the people's roar: 

What words they murmur, — Fetter not her hand ! 
So let it smite, such deeds shall be no more ! 
186 



WHEN LINCOLN DIED 

Edward William Thomson 

Already Appomattox clay 
Seemed to our hearts an age away, 
Although the April-blossomed trees 
Were droning with the very bees 
That bumbled round the conference 
When Lee resigned his long defense, 
And Grant's new gentleness subdued 
The iron Southern fortitude. 

From smoldering leaves the smoky smell 

Wreathed round Virginian fields a spell 

Of homely aromatic haze, 

So like New Hampshire springtime days 

About the slopes of Moosilauke 

It numbed my homesick heart to talk, 

And when the bobolinks trilled "Rejoice!" 

My comrade could not trust his voice. 

We were two cavalrymen assigned 
To safeguard Pinckney womankind, 
Whose darkies rambled Lord knows where 
In some persuasion that they were 
Thenceforth, in ease, at public charge 
To live as gentlemen at large — 
A purpose which, they'd heard, the war 
Was made by "Massa Linkum" for. 

The pillared mansion, battle-wrecked, 
Yet stood with ivied front erect, 
Its mossy gables, shell-fire-torn, 
Were still in lordliness upborne 
Above the neighboring barns, well stored 
With war-time's rich tobacco hoard ; 
187 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

But on the place for food, was nought 
Save what our commissary brought 
To keep the planter's folk alive 
Till Colonel Pinckney might arrive 
Paroled from northward, if his head 
Lay not among the prisoner dead. 

We'd captured him ten days before, 
When Richard Ewell's veteran corps, 
Half-naked, starving, fought amain 
To save their dwindling wagon-train. 
Since they were weak and we were strong, 
The battle was not overlong. 
Again I see the prisoners stare 
Exultant at the orange glare 
Of sunlit flame they saw aspire 
Up from the train they gave to fire. 
They'd shred apart their hero flags 
To share the silk as heart-worn rags. 
The trampled field was strewn about 
With wreckage of the closing rout — 
Their dead, their wounded, rifles broke, 
Their mules and horses slain in yoke ; 
Their torn-up records, widely spread, 
Fluttered around the muddy dead — 
So bitter did their hearts condemn 
To ruin all we took with them. 

Ten days before ! The war was past, 
The Union saved, Peace come at last, 
And Father Abraham's words of balm 
Gentling the war-worn States to calm. 
Of all the miracles he wrought 
That was the sweetest. Men who'd fought 
So long they'd learned to think in hate, 
And savor blood when bread they ate, 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

And hear their buried comrades wail, 
How long, O Lord, doth wrong prevail? 

List'ning alike, in blue or gray, 

Felt war's wild passions soothed away. 

By homely touches in the air 

That morning was so sweet and rare 

That Father Abraham's soul serene 

Seemed brooding over all the scene ; 

And when we found the plow, I guess 

We were so tired of idleness 

Our farmer fingers yearned to hold 

The handles, and to sense the mould 

Turning the earth behind the knife. 

Jim gladdened as with freshened life; — 

"Say, John," said he, "I'm feeling beat 

To know what these good folks will eat 

When you and I are gone. Next fall 

They're sure to have no crop at all. 

All their tobacco's confiscate 

By Washington — and what a state 

Of poverty they're bound to see! 

Say, buddy, what if you and me 

Just hitch our cavalry horses now 

Up to this blamed Virginia plow, 

And run some furrows through the field ? 

With commissary seed they'd yield 

A reasonable crop of corn." 

"They will," said I, "as sure's you're born !" 

Quickly we rigged, with rope and straps 
And saddle leathers — well, perhaps 
The Yankiest harness ever planned 
To haul a plow through farmin'g land. 
It made us kind of happy, too, 
Feeling like Father Abraham knew. 
189 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

The Pinckney place stood on a rise, 
And when we'd turned an end, our eyes 
Would see the mansion war had wrecked, — 
Such desolation! I suspect 
The women's hearts were mourning sore ; 
But not one tear we saw — they bore 
Composed the fortune fate had sent — 
But, O dear Lord, how still they went ! 
I've seen such quiet in a shroud, 
Inscrutably resigned and proud. 

Yet, when we'd worked an hour or two, 
And plain was what we meant to do, 
Mother and daughters came kind-eyed, — 
"Soldiers — my soldier husband's pride 
Will be to thank you well — till then 
We call you friendly, helpful men — " 
It seemed she stopped for fear of tears. 
She turned — they went — Oh, long the years 
Gone by since that brave lady spoke — 
And yet I hear the voice that broke. 

We watched them climb the lilac hill, 
Again the spring grew strangely still 
Ere, far upon the turnpike road, 
Across a clattering bridge, where flowed 
Through sand the stream of Pinckney Run, 
We heard the galloping of one 
Who, hidden by the higher ground, 
Pounded as fast as horse could pound. 
Then — all again was still as death — 
Till up the slope with laboring breath, 
A white steed rose — his rider gray 
Spurring like mad his staggering way. 



190 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

The man was old and tall and white, 
His glooming eyes looked dead to light, 
He rode with such a fateful air 
I felt a coldness thrill my hair, 
He rode as one hard hit rides out 
In horror from some battle rout, 
Bearing a cry for instant aid — ^ 
That aspect made my heart afraid. 
The death-like rider drew no rein, 

Nor seemed to note us on the plain, 

Nor seemed to know how weak in stride 

His horse strove up the long hillside ; 

When down it lurched, on foot the man 

Up through the fringing lilacs ran, 

His left hand clutching empty air 

As if his saber still hung there. 

'Twas plain as day that human blast 

Was Colonel Pinckney home at last, 

And we were free, since ordered so 

That with his coming we might go ; _ 

Yet on we plowed— the sun swung high, 

Ouiet the earth and blue the sky— _ 

Silent we wrought, as men who wait 

Some half-imagined stroke of fate, 

While through the trembling shine came knells 

Tolling from far-off Lynchburg bells. 

The solemn, thrilling sounds of gloom 
Bore portents of tremendous doom, 
On smoky zephyrs drifted by 
Shadows of hosts in charging cry, 
In fields where silence ruled profound 
Growling musketry echoed round, 
Pale phantom ranks did starkly pass 
Invisible across the grass, 

191 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Flags ghosted wild in powder fume 
Till, miracled in memory's room, 
Rang the old regiment's rousing cheer 
For Father Abraham, smiling queer. 

'Twas when we turned a furrow's end 

We saw a martial form descend 

From Mansion Hill the lilac way, 

Till in our field the veteran gray 

Stood tall and straight as at parade, 

And yet as one with soul dismayed. 

That living emblem of the South 

Faced us unblenching, though his mouth 

So quivered with the spoken word 

It seemed a tortured heart we heard ; — 

"Soldiers" — he eyed us nobly when 

We stood to "attention" — "Soldiers — men, 

For this good work my thanks are due — 

But — men — O God — men, if you knew, 

Your kindly hands had shunned the plow — 

For hell comes up between us now ! — 

Oh, sweet was peace — but gone is peace — 

Murder and hate have fresh release ! — 

The deed be on the assassin's head ! — 

Men — Abraham Lincoln's lying dead!" 

He steadied then — he told us through 
All of the tale that Lynchburg knew, 
While dumbly raged my anguished heart 
With woe from pity wrenched apart, 
For, in the fresh red furrow, bled 
'Twixt us and him the martyred dead. 
That precious crimson ran so fast 
It merged in tinge with battles past, — 
Hatcher's, Five Forks, The Wilderness, 
The Bloody Angle's maddened stress; 

192 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Down Cemetery Hill there poured 
Torrents that stormed to Kelly's Ford, 
And twice Manassas flung its flood 
To swell the four years' tide of blood, 
And Sumter blazed, and Ellsworth fell, 
While memory flashed its gleams of hell. 

The colonel's staring eyes declared 

In visions wild as ours he shared, 

Until — dear Christ — with Thine was blent 

The death-transfigured President. 

Strange — strange — the crown of thorns he wore, 

His outspread hands were pierced sore, 

And down his old black coat a tide 

Flowed from the javelin- wounded side; 

Yet 'twas his homely self there stood, 

And gently smiled across the blood, 

And changed the mystic stream to tears 

That swept afar the angry years, 

And flung me down as falls a child 

Whose heart breaks out in weeping wild. 



Yet in that field we plowed no more, 
We shunned the open Southern door, 
We saddled up, we rode away, — 
'Tis that that troubles me to-day. 

Full thirty years to dust were turned 
Before my pondering soul had learned 
The blended vision there was sent 
In sign that our Beloved meant ; — 
Children who wrought so mild my will, 
Plozv the long furrow kindly still, 
'Tis sweet the Father's work to see 
Done for the memory of me. 

193 



THE DEAD PRESIDENT 

Edward Rowland Sill 

Were there no crowns on earth, 
No evergreen to wreathe a hero wreath, 
That he must pass beyond the gates of death, 
Our hero, our slain hero, to be crowned ? 
Could there on our unworthy earth be found 

Naught to befit his worth? 

The noblest soul of all ! 
When was there ever since our Washington, 
A man so pure, so wise, so patient — one 
Who walked with this high good alone in sight, 
To speak, to do, to sanction only Right, 

Though very heaven should fall. 

Ah, not for him we weep ; 
What honor more could be in store for him ? 
Who would have had him linger in our dim 
And troublesome world, when his great work was 

done — ■ 
Who would not leave that worn and weary one 

Gladly to sleep? 

For us the stroke was just ; 
We were not worthy of that patient heart ; 
We might have helped him more, not stood apart, 
And coldly criticised his works and ways — 
Too late now, all too late — our little praise 

Sounds hollow o'er his dust. 

Be merciful, O our God! 
Forgive the meanness of our human hearts, 
That never, till a noble soul departs, 
See half the worth, or hear the angel's wings 
Till they go rustling heavenward as he springs 

Up from the mounded sod. 
194 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Yet what a deathless crown 
Of Northern pine and Southern orange-flower, 
For victory, and the land's new bridal-hour, 
Would we have wreathed for that beloved brow ! 
Sadly upon his sleeping forehead now 

We lay our cypress down. 

O martyred one, farewell ! 
Thou hast not left thy people quite alone, 
Out of thy beautiful life there comes a tone 
Of power, of love, of trust, a prophecy, 
Whose fair fulfilment all the earth shall be, 

And all the Future tell. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

William Henry Venable 
(1864) 

No adulation vain the poet brings, 

Investing thee with godlike excellence ; 
In eloquence of truth he fitly sings 

Thy eulogy by praising Common Sense, 
Firm Honesty and Courage undismayed, 

Deep Faith and Magnanimity sublime ! 
What though the violent thy name upbraid? 

Thy Wisdom's vindication leave to Time. 
O man of Fate, abide the sure event ; 

Writ in the stars, behold the just decree ! 
The God of Love chose thee His instrument, 

To save the Union, set the Bondman free ! 
Smile on amid thy care, for even now 

The war-cloud scatters and its thunders cease; 
A grateful Nation waits to crown thy brow 

With healing leaves of victory and peace. 

195 



THE LINCOLN-CHILD 

James Oppcnheim 

Clearing in the forest, 

In the wild Kentucky forest, 

And the stars, wintry stars strewn above! 

O Night that is the starriest 

Since Earth began to roll — 

For a Soul 

Is born out of Love ! 

Mother love, father love, love of Eternal God — 

Stars have pushed aside to let him through — 

Through heaven's sun-sown deeps 

One sparkling ray of God 

Strikes the clod — 

(And while an angel-host through wood and clearing 
sweeps!) 

Born in the Wild 

The Child- 
Naked, ruddy new, 

Wakes with the piteous human cry and at the mother- 
heart sleeps. 

To the mother wild berries and honey, 

To the father awe without end, 

To the child a swaddling of flannel — 

And a dawn rolls sharp and sunny 

And the skies of winter bend 

To see the first sweet word penned 

In the godliest human annal. 

Frail Mother of the Wilderness — 
How strange the world shines in 
And the cabin becomes chapel 
And the baby reveals God — 

196 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Sweet Mother of the Wilderness, 
New worlds for you begin, 
You have tasted of the apple 
That giveth wisdom starred. 

Do you dream, as all Mothers dream, 

That the child at your heart 

Is a marvel apart, 

A frail star-beam 

Unearthly splendid? 

Ah, you are the one mother 

Whose dream shall come true, 

Though another, not you, 

Shall see it ended. 

Soon in the wide wilderness, 

On a branch blown over a creek, 

Up a trail of the wild 'coon, 

In a lair of the wild bee, 

The wildling boy, by Danger's stress, 

Learnt the speech the wild things speak, 

Learnt the Earth's eternal tune 

Of God and starred Eternity — 

Went to school where God Himself was master, 

Went to church where Earth was minister — 

And in Danger and Disaster 

Felt his future manhood stir! 

All about him lay the land, 

Eastern cities, Western prairie, 

Wild, immeasurable, grand, 

But he was lost where blossomy boughs make airy 

Bowers in the forest, and the sand 

Makes brook-water a clear mirror that gives back 

Green branches and trunks black 

And clouds across the heavens lightly fanned. 

197 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Yet all the Future dreams, eager to waken, 

Within that woodland soul — 

And the bough of boy has only to be shaken 

That the fruit drop whereby this Earth shall roll 

A little nearer God than ever before. 

Little recks he of war, 

Of national millions waiting on his word — 

Dreams still the Event unstirred 

In the heart of the boy, the little babe of the wild — 

But the years hurry and the tide of the sea 

Of Time flows fast and ebbs, and he, even he, 

Must leave the wilderness, the wood-haunts wild — 

Soon shall the cyclone of Humanity 

Tearing through Earth suck up this little child 

And whirl him to the top, where he shall be 

Riding the storm-column in the lightning-stroke, 

Calm at the peak, while down below worlds rage, 

And Earth goes out in blood and battle-smoke, 

And leaves him with the sun — an epoch and an age ! 

Hushed be our hearts, and veneration 

Steep us in joy, 

Hushed be our mills, while a saved nation 

Reveres this boy ! 

Hushed be our homes, while a holy elation 

Makes the heart mild — 

Each home has a child 

And we worship a race of Lincolns in each that we 

love! 
No, they may not stand above 
The storm and steer the States, 
These little children that are born from us — 
No, they may not Lincolns prove 
In the grandeur of their fates — 

But Lincolns let them be in the heart and in the soul — 
Even thus 

198 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Shall our Earth again toward God a little swifter, 

nearer roll, 
Even thus 
Shall our children touch the stars where we have only 

glimpsed the Goal. 
Even thus and only thus 
Through the Future's arch-like span 
May they go American ! 
In his spirit shall they grow, 
To his law they shall be bound, 
With his light of God shall glow, 
With his love of Man be crowned ! 

Think of the miracle ! 

A child so like our child, 

A babe born in the wild, 

A little clod of clay, sweet blossoming and beautiful, 

Earth that is dumb and dead, 

Earth risen in child-shape, 

And suddenly agape 

Are the eyes and lips, and spread 

Is the heart and coiled the brain — 

And lo, the Silences are slain — 

In our Wilderness of Silence where we were only two, 

Man and Wife, 

Comes this third and like the voice of God breaks 

through 
With his life— 
And he answers back our Silence with his babbling, 

wordy strife — 
Born of woman, 
Born of man, 
He is human 
And he can 

Grow beyond us in the grandeur we began ! 
And none greater than this boy 

199 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Whom this day 

We revere with holy joy, 

And we thank the stars the clay 

In Kentucky took on human shape and spoke, 

In the Wilderness awoke, 

In the woodlands grew a creature of the wild, 

This February child ! 

And lo, as he grew ugly, gaunt, 

And gnarled his way into a man, 

What wisdom came to feed his want, 

What worlds came near to let him scan — ■ 

And as he fathomed through and through 

Our dark and sorry human scheme, 

He knew what Shakespeare never knew, 

What Dante never dared to dream — 

That Men are one 

Beneath the sun, 

And before God are equal souls — 

This truth was his, 

And this it is 

That round him such a glory rolls — 

For not alone he knew it as a truth, 

He made it of his blood, and of his brain — 

He crowned it on the day when piteous Booth 

Sent a whole land to weeping with world-pain — 

When a black cloud blotted the sun 

And men stopped in the streets to sob, 

To think Old Abe was dead — 
Dead, and the day's work still undone, 
Dead, and war's ruining heart athrob, 
And earth with fields of carnage freshly spread- 
Millions died fighting, 
But in this man we mourned 
Those millions, and one other — 

200 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

And the States to-day uniting, 

North and South, 

East and West, 

Speak with a people's mouth 

A rhapsody of rest 

To him our beloved best, 

Our big, gaunt, homely brother — 

Our huge Atlantic coast-storm in a shawl, 

Our cyclone in a smile — our President, 

Who knew and loved us all 

With love more eloquent 

Than his own words — with Love that in real deeds 

was spent. 
Shelley's was a world of Love, 
Carlyle's was a world of Work, 
But Lincoln's was a world above 
That of a dreamer or a clerk — 
Lincoln wed the one to the other — 
Made his a world where love gets into deeds — 
Where man was more than merely brother, 
Where the high Love was meeting human needs ! 
And lo, he made his plan 
Memorably American ! 

Through all his life this mighty Faith unfurled! 
O let us see, and let us know 
That if our hearts could catch his glow 
A faith like Lincoln's would transform the world ! 

Oh, to pour love through deeds — 

To be as Lincoln was ! — 

That all the land might fill its daily needs 

Glorified by a human Cause ! 

Then were America a vast World-Torch 

Flaming a faith across the dying Earth, 

Proclaiming from the Atlantic's rocky porch 

That a New World was struggling at the Birth ! 

201 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Ah, is this not the day 

That rolls the Earth back to that mighty hour 

When the sweet babe in the log-cabin lay 

And God was in the room, a Presence and a Power? — 

When all was sacred — even the father's heart — 

And the stirred Wilderness stood still, 

And roaring flume and shining hill 

Felt the working of God's Will? 

O living God, O Thou who living art, 

And real, and near, draw, as at that babe's birth, 

Into our souls and sanctify our Earth — 

Let down Thy strength that we endure 

Mighty and pure 

As mothers and fathers of our own Lincoln-child — 

Make us more wise, more true, more strong, more mild, 

That we may day by day 

Rear this wild blossom through its soft petals of clay, 

That hour by hour 

We may endow it with more human power 

Than is our own — 

That it may reach the goal 

Our Lincoln long has shown ! — 

O Child — flesh of our flesh, bone of our bone, 

Soul torn from out our Soul ! 

May you be great, and pure, and beautiful — 

A Soul to search this world 

To be a father, brother, comrade, son, 

A toiler powerful, 

A man with strength unfurled, 

A man whose toil is done 

One with God's Law above, 

Work wrought through Love ! 



202 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

George Alfred Toivnsend 

The peaceful valley reaching wide, 
The wild war stilled on every hand ; 

On Pisgah's top our Prophet died, 
In sight of Promised Land. 

A cheerful heart he bore alway, 

Though tragic years clashed on the while ; 
Death sat behind him at the play — 

His last look was a smile. 

His single arm crushed wrong and thrall — 
That grand good will we only dreamed, 

Two races weep around his pall, 
One saved and one redeemed. 

No battle pike his march imbrued; 

Unarmed he went 'midst martial mails, 
The footsore felt their strength renewed 

To hear his homely tales. 

The trampled flag he raised again, 
And healed our eagle's broken wing ; 

The night that scattered armed men 
Saw scorpions rise to sting. 

Down fell the brand in treason's hand 
Its gashes as he strove to stanch, 

And o'er the waste of ruined land 
To take the Olive Branch. 

The holy crest by murder stained, 

Upon its shattered portal lay ; 
The text this bravo's lips profaned 

Be sanctified for aye ! 
203 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

In still green field or belfried kirk, 

Where'er high boughs his sleep may lull, 

Here closed his life, where closed his work, 
Beside the Capitol. 

Be his no tomb perturbed and pent, 

With words too weak for grief begilt, — 

Heap up his grander monument : 
The Union he rebuilt. 



LINCOLN AND HIS PSALM 

Benjamin F. Taylor 

Move on, ye pilgrims, to the Springfield tomb — 
Be proud to-day, O portico of gloom, 
Where lies the man in solitary state 

Who never caused a tear but when he died 
And set the flags around the world half mast. 
The gentle tribune and so grandly great 
That e'en the utter avarice of Death 

That claims the world, and will not be denied, 
Could only rob him of his mortal breath, 

How strange the splendor, though the man be past ! 
His noblest inspiration was his last. 
The statues of the Capitol are there 
As when he stood upon the marble stair, 
And said those words so tender, true, and just, 
A royal psalm that took mankind on trust — 

Those words that will endure, and he in them 
While May wears flowers upon her broidered hem, 
And all the marble snows and drifts to dust : 
"Fondly do we hope, and fervently we pray 
That this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass 
away; 

204 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

With charity for all, with malice toward none, 
With firmness in the right 
As God shall give us light, 
Let us finish the work already begun — 
Care for the battle sons, the Nation's wounds to bind, 
Care for the helpless ones that they will leave behind, 
Cherish it we will, achieve it if we can, 
A just and lasting peace forever unto man !" 

Amid" old Europe's rude and thundering years 

When people strove as battle-clouds are driven, 
One calm white angel of a day appears 

In every year a gift direct from Heaven, 
Wherein from setting sun to setting sun 
No thought or deed of bitterness was done. 
"Day of the truce of God !" Be this day ours 

Until perpetual peace flows like a river, 
And hopes as fragrant as the tribute flowers 

Fill all the land forever and forever. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Margaret E. Sangster 

(February 12th, 1809— 1909) 

Child of the boundless prairie, son of the virgin soil, 
Heir to the bearing of burdens, brother to them that 

toil ; 
God and Nature together shaped him to lead m the van, 
In the stress of her wildest weather when the Nation 

needed a Man. 

205 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Eyes of a smoldering fire, heart of a lion at bay, 

Patience to plan for to-morrow, valor to serve for to- 
day, 

Mournful and mirthful and tender, quick as a flash 
with a jest, 

Hiding with gibe and great laughter, the ache that was 
dull in his breast ! 

Met were the Man and the Hour — Man who was 

strong for the shock — 
Fierce were the lightnings unleashed ; in the midst, he 

stood fast as a rock. 
Comrade he was and commander he, who was meant 

for the time, 
Iron in council and action, simple, aloof, and sublime. 

Swift slip the years from their tether, centuries pass 
like a breath, 

Only some lives are immortal, challenging darkness and 
death. 

Hewn from the stuff of the martyrs, write in the star- 
dust his name, 

Glowing, untarnished, transcendent., high on the rec- 
ords of Fame. 



THE PEOPLE'S PRESIDENT 

William Henry V enable 
(April 14th and 15th, 1865) 



Reverberant music of rejoicing bells 
Loud heralded the morn, and cannon boomed, 
And banners waved, and gladness woke the town. 

206 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

As day rolled on, processions bearing high 

Emblazoned emblems of fraternal love 

Marched through the streets, their jubilant footsteps 

timed 
To the accordant sound of martial horns, 
To beat of drum and cymbal's joyous clang; 
For armed rebellion vexed the States no more ! 
And all the day the pleasure-crested wave 
Of thankful celebration swept along, 
Then, self -exhausted, sunk and ebbed away, 
To murmur on the formless coast of night, 
Scarce heard save in the darkling caves of sleep. 

A sudden clangor of alarum bells 

At deep of midnight broke upon the air! 

The household, out of slumber startling, rose, 

To grope bewildered, till with trembling hand 

They ope the door or lift the yielding sash, 

Vague terror meanwhile shivering in their hearts, 

And, thrusting fearful faces in the gloom, 

They were aware of many sounds confused, 

Uneasy questions, exclamations strange, 

And flying rumors of appalling deeds. 

A lowering cloud-rack overcast the sky, 
And rueful winds went sobbing in the dark, 
While tremulous upon the affrighted air 
The tolling bells unceasingly proclaimed 
Portentous tidings from the Capital, 
Of tragic woe, and lamentation doled 
For Lincoln dead, — the Gentle President, — 
Untimely dead, by frantic murder slain! 
Perpetual lamentation strangely joined 
With raving threats of terrible revenge 
And iron imprecations madly rung. 

207 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

ii 

The morrow dawned. Through sad obscuring mists 

Dimly the sun beheld a sorrowing world. 

Once more the ways were thronged with citizens ; 

But music was not heard, nor any sound 

Of song or laughter. None but children smiled, 

And even children hushed their frolic mirth, 

As comprehending vaguely some vast grief 

That overshadowed all the stricken Land. 

A dusky Freedman stood apart, alone; 
His arms were folded and his head was bowed, 
And in his isolate sorrow one might read 
The utterless bereavement of a Race. 

Old veterans their shaggy eyebrows knit, 
And smote with vengeful foot the harmless earth, 
Revealing inward wrath, and as they strode, 
Their fingers' steely muscles would contract 
As fain to clutch some deadly instrument 
With fell design to render blood for blood. 

A youthful hero, like forlorn Macduff, 
Drew down his soldier cap to hide his tears, 
And moaned a patriot anguish : "Would that I 
Could yesternight have taken in my brain 
That cruel ball, and so have shielded him." 

And men recounted sadly every deed 

Of him they mourned, and reperused his words, 

Still pondering on his wisdom and his love, 

And marveling that they had not sooner known 

What prophet Soul unrecognized had dwelt 

Among them, like the Nazarene, ofttimes 

Like Him maligned, and crowned with envious thorns. 

208 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

As woeful day moved wearily along, 
Funereal emblems clouded every street ; 
Palatial hall and lowly cot obscure 
Wore kindred black, and sable heraldry 
Festooned each silken banner's drooping folds, 
And fluttered sad by every tiny flag. 

The sun went down ; the people sought their homes ; 

And households sat in meditation deep, 

Or spake of late events with grave surmise 

Of dire mishaps and sorrows yet to come; 

With doubts and fears and bitter questionings 

Of providential justice. — But when night, 

God's awful shadow, fell upon the town, 

A holy calm fell also, and a trust 

In the Omniscient Wisdom that ordains 

All things by love divine, and reconciles 

The distant issues of permitted wrong. 

Unseen of men, still working final good. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

P. C. Croll 
(An Acrostic) 

A kin to all that's noble, abreast with all that's grand, 
Bom to become the Savior of his imperiled land ; 
beared 'mid such desperate hardships, his life bound to 

a cross, 
/4-treading out the vintage, restoring freedom's loss; 
He was the greatest Champion of long down-trodden 

Right, 
A Leader in the vanguard, a race's Dawn of Light — 
Man with whom Truth was mightier than custom- for- 

tressed Might. 

209 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Lo ! how he conquers drawbacks ! Lo ! obstacles all fall ! 
In moral mail-of -armor he fights at country's call, 
A/or bows to fine-spun Error, nor fears well-buttressed 

Wrong — 
Conviction gives him courage and Valor makes him 

strong ; 
On to'rds Truth's goal he battles, clear Duty's call he 

heeds, 
Love binds him to his fellows, a Brother's right he 

pleads ; 
iVo creeds nor color blinds him in Nation's direst needs! 



FUNERAL HYMN 

Phcebe A. H ana ford 
(Air : "Mount Vernon") 

Hushed to-day are the sounds of gladness, 
From the mountains to the sea ; 

And the plaintive voice of sadness 
Rises, mighty God, to Thee. 

Freedom claimed another martyr ; 

Heaven received another saint : 
Who are we, Thy will to question ? 

Lord, we weep without complaint. 

May we, to Thy wisdom bowing, 
Own Thy love in this dark spell, 

While with tears a mighty nation 
Buries one it loved so well ! 

And, O Thou who took our leader, 
With the Promised Land in view, 

While on Pisgah's height we leave him, 
Lead us, Lord, the Jordan through. 
210 



LET THERE BE LIGHT 

John Pierpont 

From the beginning the Eternal Cause 

Hath wrought according to eternal laws — 

Laws on Himself imposed ; and His almight 

Gives and obeys His law — "Let there be light!" 

His great antagonist, the Evil One, 

Says, as his first command, "Put out the sun !" 

As poor Othello, jealous of his wife, 

Loving, yet goaded on to take her life, 

Steals in, his hand upon his dagger's handle — 

But finds himself unable while the candle 

Its beautifying beams upon her throws, 

Showing such loveliness in such repose, 

Steps back, o'erpowered, as would most other men — 

And, shaking, says, "Put out the light," and then — 

"I can not kill her when I see my mark ; 

But I can do it if the room is dark!" 

So is it with all servants of the devil : 

They shun the light because their deeds are evil. 

'Twas thus with Booth. The murderer came by 

night, 
Skulked up unseen, though all around was light, 
And, when the deed was done — the warm blood 

spilt — 
Plunged into darkness, friendly to his guilt. 
Thus has it been since man first slew his brother : 
Darkness and wrong have courted one another. 
The courtship ends in wedlock ; then begins 
The large and fertile family of sins. 
The lazy loafer, when naught else is left, 
Must "stay his stomach upon fraud or theft;" 
The swindler will, of course, the fraud deny; 
And every theft is pregnant with a lie; 

211 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Then lie kills lie, whene'er they meet abroad, 
And fraud expires, stabbed by a sharper fraud. 
The burglar cuts his brother burglar's throat, 
And picks his pocket of a spurious note, 
Which he palms off to pay a gambling bet, 
Or bilks his butcher of an honest debt. 

To such expedients knaves resort, to shirk 

God's first commandment — "Thou, to live, must 

work." 
Thanks for God's word to Adam when He said, 
"Thou with a sweating face shalt eat thy bread." 
Many there are who deem this word a curse, 
Thinking, than labor there is nothing worse, 
A blessed curse, if curse we can it call, 
That in this sentence followed "Adam's fall." 
Yet man, shortsighted man, has madly striven 
To avert this blessing of benignant Heaven, 
Has sought the pleasures and the power of wealth, 
By crafty artifice, by fraud, by stealth, 
To get his bread by some ingenious plan 
Or by the sweating face of some more honest man. 

The stronger savage aye his task will shirk, 

And make the weaker woman do his work. 

The conquering soldier came, in time, to yield 

Part of his trophies of the battle-field ; 

Money, not mercy, prompted him to save 

His captive's life, and sell him as a slave! 

Hence feuds were fanned to flame, and wars were 

waged, 
Hosts rushed to conflict and the battle raged, 
Not that each chief his f oeman's blood might spill ; 
His aim to capture rather than to kill. 
The victor spared the foe he might have slain, 
Tied him with thongs or bound him with a chain, 

212 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

And kept him toiling in his field or fold, 

Or to another gave him up for gold. 

Thus slavery came, by God and man abhorred, 

Its ugly parents — avarice and the sword ; 

Its only office, that hard work he shun, 

Whereby all glory, all true wealth are won. 

To real greatness man is never born, 

Nor yet to idle hands fill Plenty's horn. 

The leaky craft, just on destruction's brink, 

Says to the seaman, "Work your pump or sink!" 

The frozen field, beneath whose surface lie 

Undug potatoes, says, "Root hog, or die!" 

And the first law by God imposed on man 

Which, we have seen, in Paradise began, 

Imposed to shield the race from want and vice, 

And which obeyed makes earth a paradise, 

Is clearly stated by the Apostle Paul, 

In terms that must be understood by all ; 

And which, in one line, we will here repeat : 

"Who will not labor, neither let him eat" 

Slavery, reversing this divine command, 

Lifts to insulting heaven her lily hand, 

Waving her sword or brandishing her dirk, 

And swears that she will neither starve nor work; 

And hence has striven this ordinance to fix, 

For all the last four thousand of the six 

Of our bright planet's periods round the sun, 

Since man on earth his race began to run, 

Namely : "Regardless of the right or wrong, 

The weak shall labor to support the strong. 

Who labors not shall live on finest wheat, 

Who labors not shall feed on fattest meat ; 

Who fats and kills the ox, his bones may gnaw ; 

Who sows and reaps the wheat, may eat the straw ; 

The idlest hands shall stuff the busiest jaws; 

These are my fixed, my fundamental laws." 

213 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

What is the good wherewith this code is fraught? 
What are the blessings slavery hath brought ? 
Ay, where, in the wide field that she has trod, 
And o'er it plied her shackles and her rod, 
Hath not this fiend left traces of her hand, 
Diffused her blight, and pressed her burning brand ? 
Where hath she brought a single blessing ? Where 
A sweeter flower, or a more balmy air? 
More richly robed the earth in golden corn ; 
Sung holier hymns to Heaven at even or morn, 
Or with more fruits filled Amalthea's horn ? 

Ancient Dominion, where the bondman's tread, 
First on our shores was felt, lift up thy head ! 
Thy loving arms were first around him thrown, 
In thine embrace he loosed thy virgin zone, 
Closest and longest to thy bosom pressed, 
Thou'st held the laboring bondman to thy breast, 
Lift up thy head — once proud, — and show thy race 
What are the fruits of that long, close embrace ! 
What did the bondman find thee when ye met ? 
What hath he left — he hath not left thee yet ! 
He found thee fairest of the sister train ; 
Thy broad deep rivers rolling to the main ; 
From the wood-crowned Blue Ridges that divide 
Ohio's waters from the ocean tide ; 
Thy valleys, fertile as the fields that smile, 
In green and gold, along the ancient Nile. 
Thy hillsides, dark with naval oaks and pines, 
And teeming with their coal and iron mines ; 
Thy waterfalls, echoing among the hills, 
And clamorous for employment on thy mills, 
That from the thundering car and groaning wain, 
Would take thy sacks, bursting with golden grain, 
And, with their arms unwearied, fill with bread 
Each lordly mansion and each humble shed ; 

214 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

That its blue wreath of smoke would ever send 
Up to the genial skies, that o'er thee bend ; 
While, in thy inland sea, their sails unfurled, 
Might ride secure the navies of the world. 
Such was thy beauty, such thy noble dower, 
Couched, as a queen, beneath thy leafy bower, 
In thy rich robes of flowers and foliage dressed, 
By balmy breezes lovingly caressed 
Thou fairest, richest, proudest of the States, 
When, to the slave, thou openedst first thy gates. 

What hath been wrought upon thee by his hand ? 
Thy wasted forests, thine exhausted land, 
Thy fields unfenced, thy cattle few and lean, 
Thine ancient mansions fall n, thy new ones mean, 
Thy broad-leaved poisonous plant that shades thy 

soil, 
And makes the laborer languish at his toil, 
The withering flowers that deck thy faded face, 
Lazy unthrift, and labor in disgrace, 
These show the world, — and they may read who 

run — 
The work that thy blind slaves, and lords more blind 

have done. 

Ancient Dominion, have I done thee wrong? 

Say'st thou my colors are laid on too strong? 

Then I will gladly lay my pencil down, 

And trust thou wilt not blast me with thy frown 

If I exhibit of thy blighted land, 

Thy portrait painted by a friendly hand. 

The great Missourian's picture thou shalt see ; 

Thou knew'st him well, and well did he know thee. 

Missouri's Senator, well known to Fame, 
Whom some "the Old Roman," some "Old Bullion" 
name, 

215 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Thus paints thy land along Potomac's side, 
Near where Virginia's and the Nation's pride, 
Thrice honored lived, and long lamented, died. 

"Throughout this region, long by slavery curst, 

Behold man's progress upon earth reversed. 

Backwards and downwards everything goes on : 

Houses dilapidated, tenants gone. 

Where once were crowds there now is ample room ; 

Fields fertile once, are now grown up with broom. 

No crops, no fences now the plain adorn ; 

Grass and pine saplings take the place of corn. 

As men grow scarce, wild beasts more frequent 

prowl, 
The fox grows bolder, oftener hoots the owl, 
And hungry wolves are heard more savagely to howl. 
The tenant's lot, who here puts in his seed, 
Is hopeless, is deplorable indeed ; 
In vain does he solicit, day by day, 
Gravel and grit and still more heartless clay. 
The corn and oats that man and horse demand, 
He brings not from these fields of pine and sand. 
Not long ago, I passed this region o'er, 
My journey lay along Potomac's shore, 
As the broad-bosomed river gently sweeps 
Near where the Father of his Country sleeps. 
Riding along the rough highway, and thinking, 
I know not what — as Horace says — a clinking 
I heard among the stones, on the hillside, 
I checked my horse, and looking up, espied 
Some negro laborers hoeing with their hoes, 
Digging small holes, in equidistant rows, 
And burying something in them. So I cried, 
'What are you doing there ?' A slave replied — 
'We're planting corn, sir, in these gravel beds.' 
'What plant ye with it?' Answer, 'Herring-heads.' 

216 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

'Why plant ye herring-heads with corn ?' said I. 
'To make the corn come up,' was the reply. 
Again I asked, 'How many heads do you 
Plant, to each grain of corn?' He answered, 'Two. 
'Well, how high grows it, thus manured, I beg?' 
'About so high,' measuring upon his leg." 
Mother of Presidents, once haughty land, 
Behold thy portrait by a master's hand ! 

One artist more depicts thy state forlorn, 
Native is he, and "to the manner born." 
His handiwork may fascinate thine eyes ; 
High-born is he, and nominally Wise. 
Stumping the State its highest chair to gain, 
And, history tells us, stumping not in vain ; 
This limner, true to nature, thus bewails 
His mother's fate : "Commerce her fickle sails 
Long since has spread and sailed from you away ; 
Plowing no more the bosom of your bay ; 
Your coal mines, richer than are mines of gold, 
Remain undug, till your own hearths are cold. 
Your iron foundries wait impatient for 
Trip-hammer, such as Vulcan wields, or Thor. 
Nor of your coarsest cotton, do you spin 
Enough to hide your negroes' naked skin. 
Of commerce, manufactures, arts, bereft, 
Nought but the culture of your ground is left. 
And such a culture ! He that owns the fee 
Leases his land, and skins the poor lessee ; 
The poor lessee, by his unskilful toil, 
Takes his revenge, and skins, in turn, the soil. 
Instead of farms, where each his acres tills, 
Then cattle feeding upon clovered hills, 
We see the landlord's hireling overseer, 
His hunger whetted to its keenest edge, 



217 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

For a tough steak chasing his stump-tailed steer, 
Through swamps undrained, and patches rank with 

sedge." 
Such was Virginia, stripped of all disguises, 
As painted by the wisest of her Wises. 

To that low point had slavery brought down 

Proud old Virginia ere she hanged John Brown : 

And the same course, that wrought Virginia's fall, 

Was, like the cholera, sweeping over all, 

That sat in darkness, on the plains that spread 

'Twixt Rio Grande's and Potomac's bed, 

Where Abel tilled the ground and Cain ate up the 

bread. 
Brown saw Virginia as she, languid stood, 
In her slave shambles selling her own blood, 
And would have freed her laborer from his chains, 
And clothed with verdure her old naked plains ; 
But she would still on her destroyer dote, 
And hug the vampire closer to her throat, 
Till, as her pulses faint and fainter throb, 
Finding that she must either die or rob, 
She bargains with her sisters, who combine, 
Such as fair Flora and warm Caroline, 
To lay their hands on all that they can get 
To eat at leisure and not pay the sweat. 

The boldest backwoods hunter justly fears 

The hungry wolf he holds but by the ears; 

Seeing his hold's so weak, the brute's so strong, 

That, without help, he can not hold him long, 

And fearing that, if he lets go, his grim 

And wide-mouthed game will soon make game of 

him, 
Calls on his fellow-huntsmen for their help, 
In keeping down and mastering the whelp; 

218 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

And if his neighbors come not at his call, 

He grows profane, and swears he'll whip them all ; 

So our man-hunters, grappling with a foe, 

They scarce can hold, and dare not let him go, 

Call, in their terror, upon Northern smiths 

And woodmen, for new fetters and green withes, 

To bind their shaggy Samson in his mill, 

To help them hold, and keep him grinding still, 

Nor him alone, his children must they bind, 

Build them more mills wherein his boys must grind, 

Purchase new acres at their proper cost, 

Get new Virginias for them to exhaust ; 

Throw up new dikes 'gainst Freedom's overflow, 

And to her surges say, "No farther go!" 

And now, forsooth, because those neighbors stand, 

Look calmly on, and lend no helping hand, 

To their demand for aid, make no reply, 

Or coolly say, "We've our own fish to fry; 

Good friends, we're weary of this thankless task, 

We've given you more than you've a right to ask ; 

Till now, we've helped you in your time of need, 

Conceded till we can no more concede, 

Done for you all that should or will be done, 

So hold your wolf yourself, or — let him run" — 

Our Nimrods — mighty hunters — grow profane, 

Break three commandments, take God's name in vain, 

Steal from their neighbors, till they've stolen their 

fill, 
And then, proceed to bully and to kill. 

And that is War ! But War, that burns and blights, 

God makes his minister, and clothes with rights : 

The right a bondman's fetters to unclasp, 

To wrest the scepter from a rebel's grasp, 

And say, "Lay down your cowskin and your dirk, 

And take your choice, sir, starve, or go to work!" 

219 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

This said the man, raised up and sent, through grace, 
To be "a prince and savior" of a race; 

A race long doomed to servitude and scorn ; 
But through this Prince's word, to freedom born. 
The man to whom the bloody hand of War 
Brought the Commission, so long waited for, 
"Deliverance to the captives" to proclaim, 
Like him whose name "is above every name." 
For him a Nation's eyes with tears are dim : 
He slavery slew, then slavery murdered him. 
But in a race redeemed he made his mark 
On History's page. But that race, O how dark — 
When darkness covered all the cloud-wrapt land, 
And the Oppressor laid his heaviest hand, 
Upon its eye-balls, to "put out the light" 
Of hope and science from both soul and sight — 
Must it be now, when from his "long despair," 
Brought out to feel the sun, and breathe the upper 
air! 

Father of lights ! for these, thy children long 
Held in the dark by robbery and wrong, 
Held, groping on in more than Egypt's night, 
Hear we not now Thy word "Let there be light?" 
For them didst Thou a great Deliverer raise, 
For him we all now offer Thee our praise ; 
And, that his name may never be forgot, 
Would his redeemed ones, near the holy spot, 
Where his great word went forth, and where he fell, 
Build up a monument, the world to tell, 
The gratitude of all, who now are free, 
Should feel, and do feel both to him and Thee. 
Not such a monument as Egypt's kings 
Built for their bones ; but such a one as brings 



220 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Out from the hidings of oblivion's veil, 

The hallowed name of Harvard and of Yale, 

Within whose shadow, thirsty youths, who think, 

With Solomon, that "light is sweet," may drink 

From the sweet fountain Thou hast made o'erflow 

From all Thy works, above, around, below, 

Fountain of Knowledge, that, like thine own grace, 

Debars no color, and excludes no race, 

Where every child may see that, every hour 

He's gaining knowledge, he is gaining power; 

The power to labor for the common weal ; 

To soothe some grief, some malady to heal; 

And, by example to make all men see, 

That it is best for all, that all men should be free. 

Our Lincoln Monument of One shall speak, 
Like Moses faithful, and like Moses meek; 
Who led Thy people through a redder sea 
Than Israel passed, to light and liberty. 
Of him who humbly trusting in the Lord, 
Moved by the Holy Spirit, spake Thy word ; 
And, as that word was plainly, firmly spoken, 
The bondman's chains fell off, the tyrant's rod was 
broken. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Frank B. Sanborn 

Though forts are stormed and cities won, 
And banded Treason melts away, 

As sullen mists that hate the sun 
Flee at the bright assault of Day — 
Our heavy hearts will not be gay. 

221 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

For thee we mourn, in victory's hour, 
Whose courage no defeat could shake; 

Who held'st the State's resistless power 
In trust but for thy people's sake : 
For thee thy people mourning make. 

For He that sways the world with love 
(Though War and Wrath His angels are) 

Throned thee all earthly kings above, 
On threatened Freedom's flaming car, 
To frighten tyrants, near and far. 

His purpose high thy course impelled 

O'er War's red height and smoldering plain ; 

When awe, when pity thee withheld, 
He gave thy chafing steeds the rein, 
Till at thy feet lay Slavery slain. 

Then ceased thy task — another hand 
Takes up the burden thou lay'st down ; 

Sorrowing and glad, the rescued land 
Twofold awards thy just renown — 
The Victor's and the Martyr's crown. 



HYMN 

Jones Very 
(Sung at the Eulogy of Abraham Lincoln, June ist, 1865) 

O God! who dost the nations lead, 
Though oft in ways to them unknown, 

We look to Thee in this our need ; 
A supplicant people seek Thy throne. 

2.2.2 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

For he whom Thou didst raise to guide 
Has fallen by the assassin's hand ; 

In Thee alone would we confide 

To guide, to guard, to save our land. 

Through perils great, from year to year, 
Thou hast thus far our nation brought, 

And given the victory to cheer, 

And by our Chief deliverance wrought. 

With earnest prayer he sought Thy will 

In all the great events of life; 
And nobly did his work fulfill, 

Through four long years of bloody strife. 

Oh, lift us up in this sad hour, 

Let not our Country's foes prevail ; 

Sustain us by Thy mighty power, 
Let not to us Thy promise fail. 

May Justice, Liberty, and Peace, 
For which his life he freely gave, 

Bless all our land, and never cease 
To shed their glory round his grave. 



THE FUNERAL DIRGE 

L. M. Dawn 

All our land is draped in mourning, 
Hearts are bowed and strong men weep ; 
For our loved, our noble leader, 
Sleeps his last, his dreamless sleep — 
Gone forever is our hero, 
Fallen by a traitor's hand, 
Though preserved his dearest treasure, 
Our redeem'd, beloved land. 
Rest in peace. 
223 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Through our night of bloody struggle, 
Ever dauntless, firm and true, 
Bravely, gently forth he led us, 
Till the morn burst on our view — 
Till he saw the day of triumph, 
Saw the field our heroes won, 
Then his honored life was ended, 
Then his glorious work was done. 
Rest in peace. 

When from mountain, hill and valley, 
To their homes our brave boys come, 
When with welcome notes we greet them, 
Song and cheer and pealing drum, 
When we miss our loved ones fallen, 
When to weep we turn aside, 
Then for him our tears shall mingle — 
He has suffered, he has died. 
Rest in peace. 

Honored leader, long and fondly 
Shall thy memory cherished be, 
Hearts shall bless thee for their freedom, 
Hearts unborn shall sigh for thee. 
He who gave thee might and wisdom 
Gave thy spirit sweet repose, 
Farewell, guardian, friend, and father, 
Rest forever, rest in peace. 
Rest in peace. 

HYMN 

Abner Cheney Goodell, Jr. 

O Thou who givest life 

And takest it again ; 
Who, as a Father lovingly, 

O'er all mankind dost reign ; 
224 



THE PRAISE OF LINCOLN 

Our refuge and protector when 
The King of kings was slain, — 

In this our time of grief 

And doubt we come to Thee ! 

Thou only canst assuage our grief ; 
And, from Thy throne, we see 

That, in the things we chiefly doubt 
There is no mystery. 

If we did never turn 

Away from Thy dear face, 
If we did never faithless grow 

And loosen Thy embrace, 
Then doubt and fear would never find 

In us a dwelling place. 

Then, through the deepest gloom 

That ever shrouds our way, 
Our hearts would never faint, — our eyes 

Would never miss the ray 
Which, like the rising morning-star, 

Heralds the perfect day. 

Trusting Thy sovereign will, 

Confiding in Thy care, — 
As knowing that Thou kinder art 

Than earthly parents are, 
And that thou lovest whom Thou call'st 

The cruel cross to bear, — 

Then we should cease to mourn 
For them — the good and wise — 

Whom Thou dost set on earth to be 
A light unto our eyes, 

But whom, in Thy good time, Thou tak'st 
To be in Paradise. 
225 



THE FUNERAL HYMN 

Phineas Densmore Gurley 

Rest, noble martyr ! rest in peace ; 

Rest with the true and brave, 
Who, like thee, fell in Freedom's cause, 

The Nation's life to save. 

Thy name shall live while time endures, 
And men shall say of thee, 
"He saved the country from its foes, 
And bade the slave be free." 

These deeds shall be thy monument, 

Better than brass or stone; 
They leave thy fame in glory's light, 

Unrivaled and alone. 

This consecrated spot shall be 

To Freedom ever dear; 
And Freedom's sons of every race 

Shall weep and worship here. 

O God ! before whom we, in tears, 

Our fallen chief deplore, 
Grant that the cause, for which he died, 

May live for evermore. 

Doxology: 

To Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, 

The God whom we adore, 
Be glory as it was, is now, 

And shall be evermore. 

226 



NOTES 

Page i. By many people this is thought to be Whit- 
man's best poem. It was written in 1865, soon after 
the occurrence of the tragedy. In this poem he for- 
sakes his peculiar style, which many admire and many 
more abominate, and falls either consciously or uncon- 
sciously into rhythm and meter. Mr. Whitman and 
Mr. Lincoln were personal friends, and there is per- 
haps no other poem of similar length in the language, 
containing so much of pathos and genuine feeling. 

Page 5. We give here merely that part of Lowell's 
Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemoration, which 
refers to the life and character of Lincoln. The lines 
on Lincoln were not included in the poem as the poet 
gave it at the Commemoration exercises, but they were 
added immediately afterward. The part of the Ode 
here given is the part that is most highly prized. 

Page 8. These stanzas were read by the late Julia 
Ward Howe, at exercises held in Boston commemorat- 
ing the hundredth anniversary of Lincoln's birth. 

Page 20. The author of these stanzas is supposedly 
English. The poem first appeared in the pages of Mac- 
millan's Magazine, London. 

Page 34. One of the most remarkable tributes to 
Lincoln that came from the press was from the London 
Punch which, by word and picture, had ridiculed him 
without mercy. The author, singularly enough, was 
also author of Our American Cousin, the play the 
president was attending when shot. The poem was 
published May 6, 1865. 

Page 41. This poem by Leland was first published 
in the Continental Magazine. It is said to be the first 
poem written on the Proclamation of Emancipation is- 

22J 



NOTES 

sued by President Lincoln, September 22, 1862, and 
proclaimed to be in effect January 1, 1863. 

Page 51. Merely that part of Taylor's Gettysburg 
Ode relating to Lincoln, is given. 

Page 52. The Lincoln Boulder is an immense boul- 
der taken from the Hudson River, and placed upon the 
library grounds of Nyack, New York, by the soldiers 
and citizens of that city, as a memorial to Abraham 
Lincoln. The face of the boulder contains a bronze 
tablet with Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. The dedica- 
tory exercises were held June 13, 1908. 

Page 53. This poem was written when the author 
was only twelve years old. He lives at Richmond, Va. 

Page 57. For many years the grave of President 
Lincoln's mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, was neg- 
lected. About the close of the war a young man named 
Corbin, from Ohio, who was visiting in the vicinity of 
Lincoln City, Indiana, made a trip to the grave and 
wrote a poem on its neglected condition. It was pub- 
lished at the time in a Rockport (Indiana) newspaper 
over the nom de plume "Babbie." Not until a few 
years ago, long after the author's death, was his name 
disclosed. In recent years a plot of sixteen acres sur- 
rounding the grave was bought by the state, and made 
into a park, a monument has been built, and the grounds 
are kept in attractive condition at the state's expense. 

Page 59. Frances E. Willard, the distinguished 
temperance evangelist, while on a tour of the Pacific 
states, was for a short time a guest in the home of 
Mr. Alfred H. Nelson, of Ogden, Utah. Miss Willard's 
host incidentally repeated in her presence part of a 
poem about Lincoln, which he regarded as the finest 

228 



NOTES 

ever written on that great theme. Miss Willard ex- 
pressed her admiration of it, and Mr. Nelson volun- 
tarily furnished her a complete copy written from 
memory. Mr. Nelson was in Virginia City, Nevada, 
when Abraham Lincoln's funeral services were cele- 
brated there. He heard the author, who was then editor 
of the Territorial Enterprise, read the poem, and ob- 
served the profound impression it produced. The poem 
was again printed in the Illinois State Journal, Septem- 
ber 26, 1883. 

Pages 72 and 157. These poems by Lyman Whitney 
Allen are excerpts from the revised edition of the prize 
poem, Abraham Lincoln, published in the New York 
Herald, December 15, 1895. 

Page 77. President Lincoln was a firm believer in 
the significance of dreams. To dream of a ship pre- 
saged the coming of some important event. Such 
dreams came to him before the battles of Antietam, 
Murfreesboro, Vicksburg and Gettysburg. To him 
they indicated victory. It seems that on the night of 
April 13, 1865, he dreamed of seeing "A flying bark 
with all her canvas bent." He was in doubt as to what 
this foreshadowed, as the war was practically over. 

Page 83. It is said that Mr. Lincoln had an earnest 
desire to visit the Holy Land, and that just before he 
was shot he had discussed the matter with Mrs. Lin- 
coln. He told her that when the cares of state were 
over they would go to Palestine, adding : "There is no 
city I desire so much to see as Jerusalem." 

Page 90. This poem was read before the Tom Reed 
Republican Club, of Ogden, Utah, on the anniversary 
of Lincoln's birthday, February 12, 1888. It was pub- 

229 



NOTES 

lished in The Poets of Maine, a volume compiled by- 
George Bancroft Griffith, and now out of print. 

Page 170. Savannah surrendered on the 21st of De- 
cember, 1864, to General Sherman, who, on the 22nd, 
sent a despatch to President Lincoln, presenting to him 
"as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah with one 
hundred and fifty heavy guns and plenty of ammuni- 
tion, and also about twenty-five thousand bales of 
cotton." On December 26th the president replied to 
General Sherman: "Many, many thanks for your 
Christmas gift, the capture of Savannah ... it 
is indeed a great success." 

Page 174. From the Ode delivered before the 
Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences at the Acad- 
emy of Music, Brooklyn, New York, February, 1909. 

Page 183. This memorial poem was written at 
Springfield, Illinois, on the twentieth anniversary of 
the death of President Lincoln, April 15, 1885. 

Page 196. This poem was first published in Colliers 
Weekly, February, 1909. It was later included in Mr. 
Oppenheim's Monday Morning and Other Poems. 

Page 21 1. This poem was read by the venerable 
New England poet, John Pierpont, on the occasion of 
the celebration of the Colored People's Educational 
Monument Association in memory of Abraham Lin- 
coln, on the Fourth of July, 1865, in the presidential 
grounds, Washington, D. C. 

Page 223. This Funeral Dirge was set to music by 
George F. Root, and sung at the funeral services of 
Abraham Lincoln at Washington, D. C. 

A. D. W. 



230 



INDEXES 

OF AUTHORS, TITLES AND FIRST LINES 



INDEX OF AUTHORS 

PAGE 

Adams, Mary M 48 

Aldrich, Thomas Bailey 121 

Allen, Lyman Whitney 72, 157 

Baldwin, Fred Clare 40 

Banfield, Edith Colby 68 

Barrett, John E 67 

Benton, Joel ^2 

Boker, George Henry 109 

Boyle, Virginia Frazer n 

Brownell, Henry Howard 125, 148 

Bryant, William Cullen 2 

Bugbee, Emily J ^ 

Burdick, Mary Livingston ^7 

butterworth, hezekiah 83 

Cary, Alice 6g 

CARY, PHCEBE yi 

Cheney, John Vance 47, 160 

Clark, James G j6i 

Condon, A mas a Stetson po 

Cooke, Rose Terry I5 8 

Corbin, James 57 

Couch, Louis Bradford 52 

Cranch, Christopher Pearce 61 

v^ROLLj Jr. v. •••...... 20Q 

Dawn, L. M 223 

Dole, Nathan Haskell 123 

Elliott, Lydia Landon 156 

Fiske, Horace Spencer 29 

Garrison, Wendell Phillips yy 

Gibbons, James Sloane 99 

Gilder, Richard Watson 24, 42 

2 33 



INDEX OF AUTHORS 

PAGE 

Glyndon, Howard *73 

Goodell, Abner Cheney, Jr 224 

Goodman, J. T 59 

Gordon, H. L 124 

Gurley, Phineas Densmore 226 

Hager, Levi Lewis l20 

Hall, Eugene J 46 

Halpine, Charles Graham 163, 164 

Hanaford, Phcebe A 210 

Holmes, Oliver Wendell 89 

House, Benjamin Davenport 54 

Howe, Julia Ward 8, 151, 154, 172 

Johnston, James Nicoll /8 

Kemp, Harry H *59 

Kerr, Orpheus C 79 

Kiser, Samuel E 10 

Larcom, Lucy 88 

Leavitt, Mary A 121 

Leland, Charles Godfrey 4 1 

Linthicum, Richard 155 

Love, Robertus 9> 21, 29 

Lowell, James Russell 5 

McKay, James T. 13 

Mackay, Robert 56 

Mackaye, Percy 174 

MacKellae, Thomas x 58 

Malone, Walter 156 

Markham, Edwin i3> 38 

Mason, Caroline A J 9 

Melville, Herman » 73 

Mitchell, S. Weir 7° 

Moore, Frank I 69 

Morris, Robert . . 53 

Nesbit, Wilbur Dick 66 

Newell, Robert Henry 79 

Newton, William Wilberforce 3 

234 



INDEX OF AUTHORS 

PAGE 

Oppenheim, James 196 

O'Reilly, Miles 163, 164 

Parker, Benjamin S 62, 76 

Perry, Nora 170 

Piatt, John James 74, 101 

Pierpont, John 211 

Pratt, Florence Evelyn 145 

Proctor, Edna Dean 24 

Randolph, Lewis V. F 168 

Realf, Richard 167 

Riley, James Whitcomb 7, 156 

Sanborn, Frank B 221 

Sangster, Margaret E 205 

Searing, Laura C. Redden 173 

Sill, Edward Rowland 194 

Smith, Samuel Francis 183 

Sours, B. F. M 96 

Sprowl, Monroe 98 

Stedman, Edmund Clarence 26, 186 

Sterne, Stuart 28 

Stoddard, Richard Henry 102, 162 

Taylor, Bayard 51 

Taylor, Benjamin F 204 

Taylor, Tom 34 

Thompson, Maurice 17 

Thomson, Edward William 32, 138, 187 

Townsend, George Alfred 203 

Trowbridge, John Townsend 146 

Venable, William Henry 195, 206 

Very, Jones 222 

Whitman, Walt 1, no, 171 

Whittier, John Greenleaf 30 

Wightman, Richard 44 

Williams, A. Dallas 43 

Woodbury, Ida Vose 122 

235 



INDEX OF TITLES 



Abraham Lincoln 






Abraham Lincoln 






Abraham Lincoln 






Abraham Lincoln 






Abraham Lincoln 






Abraham Lincoln 






Abraham Lincoln 






Abraham Lincoln 






Abraham Lincoln 






Abraham Lincoln 




Croll 


Abraham Lincoln 






Abraham Lincoln 




Hall . 


Abraham Lincoln 






Abraham Lincoln 






Abraham Lincoln 






Abraham Lincoln 




Pratt 


Abraham Lincoln 






Abraham Lincoln 






Abraham Lincoln 






Abraham Lincoln 






Abraham Lincoln 






Abraham Lincoln 






Abraham Lincoln 


. 


Townsend 


Abraham Lincoln 






Abraham Lincoln- 


1863 . . 


Realf 


Abraham Lincoln's 


Christmas Gift 


Perry 








Ancient Abe, The 






Anniversary of the 


Birth of Abraham 


Lincoln Hager 


Appreciation of Lincoln, An 


Love . 


At Lincoln's Grave 






At Lincoln's Tomb 







Birthday of Abraham Lincoln, The 

Cabin Where Lincoln Was Born, The 
Cenotaph of Lincoln, The 



Leavitt 

Morris 
McKay 



236 



INDEX OF TITLES 



Coming of Lincoln, The .... Markham 

Commemoration Ode Lowell 

Crown His Blood-Stained Pillow . . Howe 

Dead President, The Sill . 

Dear President, The Piatt 

Death of Lincoln, The Bryant 

Douglas' Complaint 

Emancipation Group, The .... Whittier 

England's Sorrow 

Fame of Lincoln, The Williams 

Father Abraham Lincoln .... Thomson 
Forthe Services in Memory of Abraham Lincoln Holmes 

Funeral Dirge, The Dawn 

Funeral Hymn Hanaford 

Funeral Hymn, The Gurley 

Gettysburg Ode Taylor 

Grave of Lincoln, The Proctor 

Hand of Lincoln, The Stedman 

Honest Abe Brownell 

Horatian Ode, An Stoddard 

House Where Lincoln Died, The . . Mackay 

Hushed Be the Camps To-Day . . . Whitman 

Hymn ........ Goodell 

Hymn Very . 

Hymn to Abraham Lincoln . . . Newton 

In Memoriam : Abraham Lincoln . . Bugbee 

Let There Be Light Pierpont 

Liberator, The Fiske 

Life-Mask of Abraham Lincoln, The . . Sterne 

Lincoln 

Lincoln 

Lincoln Barrett 

Lincoln Clarke 

Lincoln Elliott 

237 



INDEX OF TITLES 



Lincoln Howe 

Lincoln Riser 

Lincoln Linthicum 

Lincoln MacKellar 

Lincoln Mitchell 

Lincoln Nesbit 

Lincoln Newell 

Lincoln Parker 

Lincoln Parker 

Lincoln Riley 

Lincoln Sours 

Lincoln ........ Trowbridge 

Lincoln Wightman 

Lincoln: A Retrospect .... Kemp 

Lincoln and His Psalm .... Taylor 

Lincoln at Gettysburg Adams 

Lincoln Boulder, The Couch 

Lincoln Campaign Song, A . . . . 

Lincoln Centenary Ode .... Mackaye 

Lincoln-Child, The Oppenheim 

Lincoln — 1865 Randolph 

Lincoln in Bronze ..... Love . 

Lincoln's Birthday Dole . 

Lincoln's Birthday Woodbury 

Lincoln's Last Dream Butterworth 

Lincoln's Passing Bell .... Larcom 

Lincoln — The Boy Riley 

Lincoln, The Man of the People . . Markham 

Martyr, The Cranch 

Martyr, The Melville 

Mother of Lincoln, The .... House 

Neglected Grave of Lincoln's Mother, The Corbin 

Night Ride of Ancient Abe, The . . Halpine 

O Captain ! My Captain ! . . . . Whitman 

On a Picture of Lincoln .... Cheney 

On Reading President Lincoln's Letter . Gordon 

On the Life-Mask of Abraham Lincoln . Gilder 

Our Good President Cary . 

Our Heroic Themes Boker 

238 



Page 



155 

158 

70 

66 

79 

62 

76 

7 

96 
146 

44 
159 
204 

48 
52 
145 
174 
196 
168 
29 
123 
122 

83 

88 

156 

13 

54 
73 
54 

57 
163 

1 

47 

124 

24 

7i 
109 



INDEX OF TITLES 

Page 

Pardon Howe . 154 

Parricide Howe . 151 

People's President, The .... Venable . 206 

President Lincoln's Grave .... Mason . 19 

President's Proclamation, The . . . Searing . 173 

Proclamation, The Leland . 41 

Punch's Apology Taylor . 34 

Sonnet in]i862 Piatt . 101 

Stroke of Justice, The Allen . 157 

To a Portrait of Abraham Lincoln . . Banfield . 68 

To the Spirit of Abraham Lincoln . . Gilder . 42 

Vision of Abraham Lincoln, The . . Garrison . 77 

Voice of Destiny, The Allen . 72 

Washington and Lincoln 34 

We Are Coming, Father Abraham . . Gibbons . 99 

We Talked of Lincoln Thomson . 32 

When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloumed Whitman . 1 10 

When Lincoln Died Thomson . 187 

"Wide-Awake Club" Song 147 



239 



INDEX OF FIRST LINES 

PAGE 

A blend of mirth and sadness, smiles and tears .... 156 

A nation lay at rest. The mighty storm 59 

A nation's voice, a nation's praise 48 

A peaceful life; — just toil and rest 7 

A wooded hill — a low-sunk grave 57 

Abe Lincoln? Wull, I reckon ! Not a mile f'om where we be 21 

Above Judea's purple-mantled plain 56 

Abraham Lincoln, the Dear President 74 

After the eyes that looked, the lips that spake 51 

Again thy birthday dawns, O man beloved 122 

Ah, countless wonders brought from every zone .... 28 

Akin to all that's noble, abreast with all that's grand . . . 209 

All our land is draped in mourning 223 

Already Appomattox day 187 

Amidst thy sacred effigies 30 

And he was once a babe, little and like any other ... 44 

And so they buried Lincoln? Strange and vain .... 13 

April flowers were in the hollows; in the air were April bells 83 

As back we look across the ages 123 

Bear him to his Western home 78 

Chained by stern duty to the rock of state 70 

Child of the boundless prairie, son of the virgin soil . . . 205 

Clearing in the forest 196 

Crown his blood-stained pillow 172 

Crown we our heroes with a holier wreath 109 

Dead is the roll of the drums 125 

Dreaming, he woke, our Martyr President 77 

Fame's trumpet blows a silver note 67 

"Forgive them, for they know not what they do" .... 186 

From the beginning the Eternal Cause 211 

From the tints and the tones of other years 121 

Good Friday was the day 73 

240 



INDEX OF FIRST LINES 

PAGE 

He punished me — in fight you see 147 

Here do I look upon historic form 29 

Heroic soul, in homely garb half hid 146 

Heroic statesman, hail 183 

His people called, and forth he came 160 

"Honest Abe!" What strange vexation 148 

Hundreds there have been, loftier than their kind . . . 158 

Hushed be the camps to-day 17 1 

Hushed to-day are the sounds of gladness 210 

I read once more this care-worn, patient face 47 

In cabined solitude, beside dim fires at midnight hour . . 98 

In him distilled and potent the choice essence of a race . . 39 

It touches to the quick the spirit of one 167 

Lay his dear ashes where ye will 19 

Lean child of the rugged hills 62 

"Let us up and do or die" 164 

Life may be given in many ways 4 

Lift up the bowed, desponding head 173 

Lincoln, the woodsman, in the clearing stood 145 

Lincoln ! When men would name a man 20 

Look on this cast, and know the hand 26 

May one who fought in honor for the South 17 

Men saw no portents on that winter night 38 

Move on, ye pilgrims, to the Springfield tomb 204 

My private shrine. The Gettysburg Address 138 

New heroes rise above the toiling throng 10 

No adulation vain the poet brings 195 

No ceremonial 174 

No glittering chaplet brought from other lands .... 69 

No, not in vain he died, not all in vain 61 

No trumpet blared the word that he was born 11 

Not a drum was heard, not a party cry 163 

Not as when some great captain falls 102 

Now must the storied Potomac 24 

Now that the winds of Peace have blown away .... 159 

Now who has done the greatest deed 41 

241 



INDEX OF FIRST LINES 

PAGE 

O Captain ! my Captain ! our fearful trip is done .... I 

O God! who dost the nations lead 222 

O honored name, revered and undecaying 46 

O Mighty Boulder, wrought by God's own hand .... 52 

O simple as the rhymes that tell 156 

O Thou of soul and sense and breath 89 

O Thou who givest life 224 

O'er the warrior gauntlet grim 151 

Oh, hear you not the wild huzzas 147 

Oh, slow to smite and swift to spare 2 

One forged the links that welded fast 34 

Only a cabin, old and poor 53 

Our sun hath gone down at the noon-day 7 1 

Out on the lie of "lowly born" 54 

Over snowy fields of cotton 96 

Pains the sharp sentence the heart in whose wrath it was 

uttered 154 

Perish the power that, bowed to dust 124 

Rest, noble martyr, rest in peace 226 

Reverberant music of rejoicing bells 206 

Safe in Fame's gallery through all the years 37 

Saw you in his boyhood days 3 

Shade of our greatest, O look down to-day 42 

So deep our grief, it may be silence is 158 

Some opulent force of genius, soul and race 182 

Somewhar down thar round Hodgeville, Kaintucky ... 9 

Somewhere to-day in dolor and in want 90 

Stand like an anvil, when 'tis beaten 169 

Stern be the Pilot in the dreadful hour 101 

The deeds of him who bore that name 156 

The hand of an assassin, glowing red 3 1 

The hour was come, and in that hour he stood .... 72 

The hour was come, the Nation's crucial hour .... 157 

The peaceful valley reaching wide 2 °3 

The soft new grass is creeping o'er the graves .... 121 

242 



INDEX OF FIRST LINES 



The voice is hushed, the heart is still 

There's a burden of grief on the breezes of spring 

This bronze doth keep the very form and mold 

This day, upon the scroll of fame 

This man whose homely face you look upon 

Though forts are stormed and cities won 

Through the dim pageant of the years . 

Thy rugged features more heroic are 

Tolling, tolling, tolling 

'Twas in eighteen hundred and sixty-four 
'Twas needed — the name of a Martyr sublime 



PAGE 
7 6 

IS 

24 

120 
162 
221 



I/O 

79 



Uprisen from his fasced chair of state 29 

We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand 

more 99 

We hear a cry increasing still 145 

We mark the lowly place where he was born 66 

We talked of Abraham Lincoln in the night 32 

Were there no crowns on earth 194 

What hast thou hidden, mournful Night 168 

What strong, sure hand shall guide the laboring ship . . 155 

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed no 

When the Norn Mother saw the Whirlwind Hour ... 13 

Wherever men are civilized they know 43 

With Humor's wand in hands to hardship used .... 40 

With life unsullied from his youth 161 

You lay a wreath on murdered Lincoln's bier 34 



243 



18 191! 



One copy del. to Cat. Div. 



SEP 18 1» M 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 


Hill 


111! 


i in 
i mi 


1 


!;"! 



012 025 796 1 



